Higgs Range Narrowed; Hunt Enters Final Stage

gbrumfiel writes "For forty years, the Higgs boson has remained a theoretical construct, but by Christmas, scientists may have a pretty good idea of whether it's real or not. Nature News reports that a new analysis has further narrowed the Higgs range, and data gathered this autumn at the LHC should be enough to show a faint signal from a Higgs, if it's there. (Already one signal has disappeared earlier in the year.) Physicists hope to finish their analysis of the autumn data by the year's end, but even if they come up empty-handed it won't be the end of the story. The Higgs is commonly referred to as the particle that endows others with mass, but its real appeal is the ability to unify the weak nuclear force with electromagnetism. If there is no Higgs, some other mechanism for creating a unified 'electroweak' force should be found inside the LHC."

Comments

Higgs boson in stockings

[tedgyz]

Merry Christmas! We will all get Higgs bosons in our stockings. But I guess they have always been there, we just couldn't see them.

Re:Higgs boson in stockings

[iggymanz]

No, I predict we will find nothing, and have to invent a new standard model. That would be more fun and more interesting.

Re:Higgs boson in stockings

[tunapez]

Definitely, and as Occum's Razor suggests, probably. We have on the books now, apparently, neutrinos faster than light, a preponderance of theorized dark matter still MIA and many alternate dimensions/universes that cannot ever be proved/disproved.

Perhaps Wigner was wrong, are we creating maths to describe what we (want to)see, rather than explaining the fundamentals, after all?

Re:Higgs boson in stockings

[iggymanz]

we already know that the observable universe is a very tiny fraction of the whole thing, on the order of 10^-26 or less. Any possibility of FTL travel by particles opens the possibility to expanding our observations beyond that realm, maybe to somewhere with different physics.

Fucking science, is there anything it can't do?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still in awe every time I see any pictures of the LHC.

Particle physics blog

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you interested in LHC physics I would highly recommend this blog:

http://profmattstrassler.com/

As far as I can tell the author is an extremely well-respected physicist (disclaimer: I am a theoretical physicist but do not work on LHC physics) and I also find his blog very clear and I like the extra level of detail.

(The author also does not try to sell you his own favorite theory of everything, a thing I've seen happening a few times too many in the blogs out there.)

Electroweak is old news

[Kz]

Electromagnetism and weak nuclear force have a solid unification theory and supporting experiments since the 70's (and a few nobel prizes as back as '79 at least). Higgs boson is involved in electroweak symmetry breaking, and possibly unification of electroweak with the strong force.

Re:higgs as real as santa

[Ihmhi]

Yeah , fuck scientists! Those entitled pricks draped in lab coats haven't done shit* for us!

.

.

.

* Except for essentially wiping out polio, smallpox, and a host of other major diseases. And generally improving the quality of life not just for all Americans but people the world around. And discovering nuclear power. And providing insights into how our universe works so that we may better understand it. And making the end of hunger a political problem rather than a practical problem. And...

What is "real" ?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Serious question here: What does it mean to say that Higgs bosons are "real" ?

Physicists often go out of their way to point out that theory is under-determined by data. If you have two theories that account for all our data, but one theory contains a Higgs bosons and the other theory does not, do we still say that Higgs bosons are "real"?

Or, does saying they're "real" assume some standard model of physics as the context for the statement?

Re:What is "real" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Real in this case means independently measurable and not just a construct to compensate for the difference between the mathematical model and the data.
If it is real the model works, if it isn't real the model only works in certain circumstances.
The end goal is to find a model that can explain the universe without dark matter made out of handwaveium and explains why neutrinos shows up too early and stuff like that.
When the model works without footnotes that says "Only applies to macroscopic numbers" and stuff like that then whatever it descirbes can be called "real enough"

Re:What is "real" ?

[Mr_Huber]

As real as the neutrino. The neutrino was a prediction based on a model of physics at the time and remained theoretical for thirty years until an experiment confirmed their existence. Like the Higgs, it was thought to be nearly impossible to experimentally verify for a very long time. And when it was observed, it was not observed directly, but through the behavior of particles it interacted with. The interacting particles, in order to behave as they did, must have interacted with something that had the precise qualities ascribed to the neutrino. Therefore, a neutrino must have interacted with them. Therefore, neutrinos exist.

Now we have hot and cold running neutrinos and can use them to probe all sorts of interesting things. But we have still not directly observed them in a detector, because, by their nature, they don't show up. But we know that when we see particles behaving as if they interacted with a near massless, half spin object interacting weakly, we call it a neutrino and move on.

Re:What is "real" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. They said "hmmmm this could be explained by real thing with the following properties...". Followed by "let's see if we can find such a thing".

The point of these experiments is precisely to find out whether it's real because so far nobody knows for sure. it's looking more and more likely that the answer is "no".

Re:Important stuff

[Sulphur]

What the hell is a bosone?

It unifies the pasta weak with the marinara field.

They'll Smash An Atom

[Greyfox]

And on film will appear, faintly, 'import weak-electromagnetic-force'.

Re:Important stuff

[hedwards]

In the '80s we were freaked out about losing the bozone layer, don't you remember anything about that time period?

Re:higgs as real as santa

[Anonymous Coward]

The world wide web was born at CERN. Complaining about CERN on the web is ignorantly funny.

Re:higgs as real as santa

[budgenator]

Yeah , fuck scientists! Those entitled pricks draped in lab coats haven't done shit* for us!

* Except for essentially wiping out polio, smallpox, and a host of other major diseases. And generally improving the quality of life not just for all Americans but people the world around. And discovering nuclear power. And providing insights into how our universe works so that we may better understand it. And making the end of hunger a political problem rather than a practical problem. And...

Excellent rant, it reminded me of this from Monty Python's "Life of Brian"

Reg: But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

PFJ Member: Brought peace?

Reg: Oh, peace? SHUT UP!

Life of Brian

I salute you.

A lot of theories will be going down soon

[gmfeier]

I suspect that we have fallen into a trap similar to the Ptolemaic system. Just because it works mathematically doesn't mean the universe is obligated to actually match the predictions. I wonder if there is an underlying false assumption that is causing all the current uncertainties. Simply put - has the speed of light been absolutely constant since the big bang? If not, a lot of things look entirely different.

Another blog worth following

[Anonymous Coward]

US LHC Blog
I like this very much. Lots of physics explained for us mere mortals (who still have some scientific background).

Re:Irony?

[j-beda]

Of course not. The point, though, is that Jesus' birthday is not meant to coincide with pagan holiday.

The linked Snopes article seems to claim otherwise when it says "The idea of celebrating the Nativity on December 25 was first suggested early in the fourth century CE, a clever move on the part of Church fathers who wished to eclipse the December 25 festivities of a rival pagan religion..."

http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/jesus.asp

When did Snopes start obfuscating so that it was difficult to copy text from their pages or is something screwy with my system?

Re:Irony?

[budgenator]

Christmas is when Christ's birth is celebrated, not when it happened.

Re:Irony?

[UnknownSoldier]

If it was _that_ important don't you think he would of at least mentioned it, instead of explicitly saying to celebrate his death?