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Precise W Boson Mass Measurement Helps Lead the Way To the Higgs Boson

Posted by Soulskill on from the over-the-river-and-through-the-woods dept.

New submitter SchrodingerZ writes "'The world's most precise measurement of the mass of the W Boson, one of nature's elementary particles, has been achieved by scientists from the CDF and DZero collaborations at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.' This new number (80387 +- 17 MeV/c^2) puts more constraint on the mass of the theorized Higgs Boson, which is theorized to give mass to all other things, supporting the standard model. 'Scientists employ two techniques to find the hiding place of the Higgs particle: the direct production of Higgs particles and precision measurements of other particles and forces that could be influenced by the existence of a Higgs particle.'"

26 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Why can science... by wbr1 · · Score: 4, Funny

    ....routinely measure such esoteric things, but still can't devise a test to determine my girlfriends mood?

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    1. Re:Why can science... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      We can either determine her mood or determine that she is your girlfriend, not both.

    2. Re:Why can science... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Because people are much more complex than particle physics. Why that might seems strange, physicists are so very successful in part because the phenomena they seek to explain are the simplest possible, i.e. the fundaments of reality.

      Not that it's easy, no. But very much easier, or at least possible, than mathematically model, in any degree, a person.

      We cannot really even measure the mass of person to the degree of precision we can measure particles. Much in the same sense that measuring the shoreline of Norway is non-trivial if we want mm precision.

    3. Re:Why can science... by binarylarry · · Score: 2

      A better question is when did Pierce Brosnan become a physicist?

      I guess we know why he turned James Bond down.

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    4. Re:Why can science... by wbr1 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Hmmm. Schrodinger's pussy I guess.

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      Silence is a state of mime.
    5. Re:Why can science... by pinfall · · Score: 2

      I thought the title read Pierce Brosnan Male Measurements

  2. 80387? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    So each W Bozon is a math coprocessor in and of itself?

    Imagine a beowulf cluster...

  3. Where does the Higgs mass come from? by crt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If all other things get their mass from the Higgs Boson, where does the Higgs boson get its mass from?

    1. Re:Where does the Higgs mass come from? by ch-chuck · · Score: 5, Funny

      It's Higgs Boson's all the way down.

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    2. Re:Where does the Higgs mass come from? by xlsior · · Score: 2

      It's turtles, all the way down.

    3. Re:Where does the Higgs mass come from? by elfprince13 · · Score: 5, Informative

      The Higgs Mechanism is thought to give particles mass, and the Higgs boson is the particle that we anticipate to be the carrier particle for the Higgs field. Your question is a little bit like asking "if all other things get their light from photons, where do the photons get their light from?", which is to say, it reveals a bit of a misunderstanding about what's actually going on. That's okay though, because hardly anyone bothers to explain these things.

    4. Re:Where does the Higgs mass come from? by Quantum+Jim · · Score: 5, Informative

      They get their masses from the Higgs Field. The W Boson is like a ripple in the W-Field. An electron is like a ripple in the electron-field (not the electrical field). Et cetera. So a Higgs Boson is like a ripple in the Higgs Field. But it still gets is mass by interacting with that field, like most other elementary particles with mass. Here's a good article that explains that: If the Higgs field were zero.

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    5. Re:Where does the Higgs mass come from? by BitterOak · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The Higgs Mechanism is thought to give particles mass, and the Higgs boson is the particle that we anticipate to be the carrier particle for the Higgs field. Your question is a little bit like asking "if all other things get their light from photons, where do the photons get their light from?", which is to say, it reveals a bit of a misunderstanding about what's actually going on. That's okay though, because hardly anyone bothers to explain these things.

      No, that's not a good analogy, because Higgs particles do indeed have a mass of their own, while photons don't tan. Higgs particles can interact with themselves, and that's why they can have a mass while also giving other particles their mass. A better photon analogy would be this: photons carry the electromagnetic force and so they can be said to give charged particles their charge. But photons don't self-interact, so photons themselves don't have charge.

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    6. Re:Where does the Higgs mass come from? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This is a misunderstanding and misexplanation. What happens is that "Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking" gives particles their mass. The vacuum lowest energy ) state of must obey the same symmetry. Usually this is not a problem because the symmetry maps the vacuum state into itself. However with gauge symmetries this is not generally the case. Instead there are a set of states which are all symmetric to the each other as a vacuum. For the dynamics to be determined uniquely a vacuum state must be chosen. The process of chosing the vacuum state breaks the symmetry. ( Put another way the Universe evolves in a way which respects the symmetry, but the starting conditions for the Universe cannot possibly obey the symmetry, so it is broken. )

      Spontaneous symmetry breaking generates two artifacts. One is the particle essentially interacting with itself at the ground state. This is the mass of the particle.
      The other is the particle oscillating between different ground states. This gives rise to the Higgs.

      So in essence particle mass and the Higgs are both artifacts of Spontaneous Symmmetry Breaking.

  4. Obligatory XKCD by Powercntrl · · Score: 4, Funny

    Slashdot should just automatically link Higgs Boson to this, every time.

    There's probably some truth to this, too. A particle accelerator is the ultimate geek toy.

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    DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
    1. Re:Obligatory XKCD by lennier · · Score: 2

      You would prefer another target, a massive scalar target? I grow tired of asking this, so it will be the last time. Where is the Higgs Boson?

      125 GeV. It's at 125 GeV.

      There, Lord Vader. She can be reasonable. Continue with the ATLAS/CMS collaboration; you can fire when ready.

      --
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  5. Cupcakes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I find the best way to lure a Higgs Boson out of hiding is with cupcakes.

  6. Re:Except that the Higgs Boson doesn't exist by P-niiice · · Score: 2

    If you had any understanding of the subject, they seem to be getting closer - not failing at all?

  7. Wrong Summary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Higgs boson is the result of symmetry breaking in the electroweak force. It, in itself, does not give mass to all other things. It is an indicator that allows the existence of the higgs field and mechanism to be inferred.

  8. LEXX by jimmerz28 · · Score: 2

    Everytime we keep getting articles about this I wonder how accurate LEXX was in saying how M class planets always end up destroying themselves when attempting to find the mass of the Higgs Boson.

  9. "Lead the way to the Higgs Boson"? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

    The headline reads as if it were an announcement that the Higgs had been discovered, when all that's really happened is they've further constrained the possible range of masses the Higgs Boson could be if it exists at all.

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  10. come on now by KingAlanI · · Score: 4, Funny

    menstruation jokes are the lowest form of humor, period.

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  11. Oblig. Dilbert by Cigarra · · Score: 2

    Dilbert figured it out already

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  12. Tevatron data and software. by patfla · · Score: 2

    It's interesting that the Tevatron is still producing scientific results even though the particle accelerator was shutdown Sept 30 of 2011. And that's because there's still a massive quantity of undigested data from the experiments that stopped running at that time.

    If one reads about the LHC, one sees the same phenomenon. Which proposes that one of the things that could kick particle physics (and many other areas) forward the fastest is better software. Or maybe that's already obvious to everyone else?

    1. Re:Tevatron data and software. by Mr+Z · · Score: 2

      Is it really the software, or is it proper formulations of hypotheses to test against the raw data? It's one thing to say "I'm looking for the XYZ particle." It's quite another to say "If an XYZ particle interacts with a ZYX particle in such-a-such way, it should result in ZZZ and XXX decaying in such-a-such pattern. Did we see that pattern?" Wash, rinse, repeat for all possible interactions and decay product patterns.

      I'm not a particle physicist, but my impression from the outside looking in is that the limit seems to be the creativity of the physicists constructing "experiments" to run against the data based on careful extrapolations from the standard model.

      Any physicists here on /. that can confirm, deny or refine that impression?

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  13. Re:Mark Alpert, Final Theory by tenco · · Score: 2

    This is (sort of) the plot of a sci-fi thriller I read recently: Final Theory by Mark Alpert. The idea is that Einstein hides a discovery of his which could lead to weapons even worse than the atomic bomb.

    Sounds a lot like "The Physicists" from Dürrenmatt.