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Has LHC Seen a Hint of the Higgs?
gbrumfiel writes "Researchers at two detectors at the Large Hadron Collider are seeing something unusual. The signal is faint, but it could be from the long-sought Higgs particle. The Higgs is part of the mechanism that gives other particles mass, and it also unifies the electromagnetic and electroweak forces. No one is willing to declare it found just yet, but the new data from the CMS and ATLAS detectors are an independent, 'tantalizing' hint of what's to come. The results were presented today at HEP-2011 in Grenoble, France."
It hasn't opened a wormhole to another dimension yet.... I remain unimpressed.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
I'll hold my breath on this one. We've been fed the "we think we've seen Higgs" enough times now that until some repeatable data comes down the line, I'm just going to assume its screwy instrumentation or glitches.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'm not interested until I can buy Higgs Bosons with my Bitcoins.
Doesn't electroweak already encompass electromagnetic? Should that be 'unifies the electromagnetic and weak forces'?
If we've never found it? I'm sure the theory is provable, but this is wayyyy too premature to care.
I've seen the Higgs.
He's a little old bald Englishman.
A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
It hasn't opened a wormhole to another dimension yet...
We also have not found the Higgs yet there is not enough data to distinguish this from a fluctuation in the background. Frankly I'm appalled at Nature for printing wild, inflammatory speculation like this. If their editors have this level of ignorance of science you have to question what sort of decisions they are making regarding the journal itself...not that many particle physics papers are typically submitted there: perhaps this is why!
Seeing its existence is an important confirmation of the Standard Model. In that sense, nothing happens when you find it, since we've been using the Standard Model for decades. It's not like we waited to confirm the whole thing before making predictions with it.
It would mean that we could STOP doing other things, i.e. looking at some alternatives to the Standard Model that don't incorporate the Higgs. (Or rather, incorporate different variations of the Higgs, including multiple Higgses.)
Once you find it, you can work on narrowing down its mass, which is something the Standard Model doesn't predict. Once you know that, you can start producing Higgs and see how it interacts with other particles. Again, when it confirms what you already suspect, it closes off some avenues of alternative research. Even better, when you find something unexpected, you start looking down that route.
Don't you see; fusion or more specifically cold fusion is just a red haring used by the science community to get the people with the money to invest it in projects.
You get confirmation of the Standard Model, and more basic research, whose dividends you probably cannot perceive ahead of time. Unless, of course, you're one of those fucktards who actually believes basic research is useless.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This has already been reported in April.
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hint: Higgins is Robin Masters.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Greetings from the LHC!
At this point in time, with the amount of data that we have, the answer is: "perhaps, perhaps not". There is not enough evidence to cut it either way.
If not, what's to be gained from the discovery?
As far as practical applications, nobody knows what it could mean. It could be 100 years before your grandkids are using a device every day that depends on what we learned about the Higgs, without even knowing or caring that this is so.
For instance, nobody working on Quantum Mechanics early last century would have had any clue whatsoever that this would enable the computer revolution. But without that basic research, there wouldn't be a computer on your desk right now.
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I read this in Morgan Freeman's voice.
considering the national ignition facility has achieved fusion using laser beams and deuterium pellets and has been moving toward net positive energy rates that indicate they will reach ignition with in the next year save for mechanical malfunctions, I would say, we have fusion.
the higgs is a messaging particle... since the message it carries in mass, mass is inherent to it.
I think you mean "can't" since the means we have to come up with another version of the standard model that accounts for no Higgs or at least, no Higgs at the energies we searched.
Most of the applications of quantum mechanics were quite evident at the moment the theory was created. Specificaly computers were already available for a long time when solid state physics came out, and they were one of the obvious applications of the transistor, that was one of the obvious application of the theory (that is, of course, after the theory was created).
I'm not holding my breath for applications of the discovery of the Higgs' bosson. The discovery that it doesn't exist, otherwise, may be very interesting.
That said, it was just a 2.8 sigma event. Well, what are the odds of nobody seeing an expurious 2.8 sigma even up to now?
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Yeah, by the time the transistor was invented the application was obvious. That was in the late 1940s. The people laying the groundwork and doing basic research in Quantum Mechanics in the 1900s and 1910s had no clue that their research would lead to the transistor's invention.
Today, we have no idea if in fifty years someone will invent a "Higgsistor", if it's possible or what it would do, and what it could be used for. Probably whoever actually invents it will know these things.
And then someone will say, when talking about how the next piece of pure research could have unknown benefits, "Well when the Higgsistor was invented, they knew what the applications were already. I doubt this new thing would have any new applications since they aren't obvious to us now."
The enemies of Democracy are
The Higgs self-interacts, like gluons do. Renormalization prevents it from becoming infinite, and it converges to a finite value, but it makes the math very ugly.
Well I'm questioning your questioning of his questioning!
I can't help myself, I'm a Lisp programmer and this level of nesting is compulsory for me.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
What'd be more exciting is if they couldn't find it. Then there'd be something worthwhile to talk about.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Damn those researchers--I just got my hands on "A Dance with Dragons" and they are already reading "A Hint of Higgs!"
Sounds more like "we will have fusion in the next year save for mechanical malfunctions" to me.
I am trolling
it isn't?
BTW: I do support M theory as an idea but would like the theory of everything to be a bit more elegant ie: creating an infinite regression or scaling loop... So I'm quite happy that this was just a false alarm
-- no sig today
There are quite a lot of theories that provide for unification at MUCH higher energies (10^15 / 10^16 GeV.) The problem is, if LHC isn't big enough to prove something either way, it's a HELL of a gap to cross experimentally. (The "desert.")
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
Fusion is a specific nuclear reaction... they have achieved that already... they are going to break even shortly on the energy consumption/production ratio and soon after that, they will have a usable surplus of energy.
Fusion is a specific nuclear reaction... they have achieved that already...
Sure, but we'd achieved that back in 1970. When we talk about fusion being 20 years away, we're talking about useful energy from it.
I am trolling
Ohh... well, considering I used the term... IGNITION...I believe I was more accurate in my terminology.