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CERN Announcing New LHC Results July 4th
An anonymous reader writes "The Higgs boson is regarded as the key to understanding the universe. Physicists say its job is to give the particles that make up atoms their mass. Without this mass, these particles would zip though the cosmos at the speed of light, unable to bind together to form the atoms that make up everything in the universe, from planets to people. From the article: 'Five leading theoretical physicists have been invited to the event on Wednesday - sparking speculation that the particle has been discovered. Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider are expected to say they are 99.99 per cent certain it has been found - which is known as 'four sigma' level. Peter Higgs, the Edinburgh University emeritus professor of physics that the particle is named after, is among those who have been called to the press conference in Switzerland."
...but it doesn't carry any weight anymore.
....Gordon Freeman's invited.
Seriously though, they'll find another one won't they, so can I theorise that the Higgs Boson is made up of, say Anonymous Coward Bosons? I've always wanted to be famous...
when they can say with 100% call me , i want to lose a few pounds...you can have the higgs in those particles back....
Marty McFly: Whoa. This is heavy.
Dr. Emmett Brown: There's that word again. "Heavy." Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?
today is spelling optional day.
Does it have round corners?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
If we prove that the God Particle exists, will it vanish in a puff of logic?
...and why is everyone trying to get a peek at her bosom? :)
Saying a particle has a "job" sounds an awful lot like intended purpose, which means design... So, which physicists says this again?
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Isn't that saying "Hey we found giant footprints in the forest, there must be a Sasquatch here!"
99.99% ?
Is this the correct interpretation?
http://understandinguncertainty.org/why-it%E2%80%99s-important-be-pedantic-about-sigmas-and-commas
Yo mamma's so fat, CERN used her to find the Higgs-Boson with four-sigma certainty.
During a run they record billions of collisions and terabytes a day. Even so that is just a tiny fraction of so-called "interesting collisions"; most routine data goes unrecorded. Over the months they have recorded trillions of collisions, each which represents the state of several thousand detectors. Then they search for Higgs decay candidates off-line. There are several potential decay patterns, so the search may be done multiple times. Last year's "hint" of the Higgs was 3-5 anomalous events at a likely energy at two colliders. They'd like at least a dozen, for 4 to 5 standard deviations above the noise before they call it a new particle. This is searching for one significant event on average out of each trillion recorded.
when they can say with 100% call me
You can never be 100% certain in science only so certain that no reasonable person would doubt it.
i want to lose a few pounds...you can have the higgs in those particles back....
Firstly pounds measure weight, not mass, so it is the Earth's gravitational field that causes your weight. Go visit inter-galactic space any you'll have no appreciable weight (low Earth orbit will have very little effect on your weight though - it's apparent, not true, weightlessness).
Secondly the Higgs causes the fundamental particles to have mass e..g electron, quarks, W/Z bosons etc. The vast majority of your mass comes from the protons and neutrons in the atomic nuclei which make up your body. This mass is almost entirely to do with the binding energy between the quarks and almost nothing to do with the Higgs. In fact, while the quark masses are hard to measure, the best estimate is that less than 0.1% of a proton or neutron mass comes from the quark masses i.e. from the Higgs.
I was expecting an exciting ending to the search, but it just ended up being a big deus ex machina.
Rock Us, Dukakis.
They're going to have a display of the excitation of the Higgs field above its ground state on a day when the U.S. will hold displays of excitation above its ground states across the country. Perhaps in the future the day will be known as Higgsdependence Day?
So you don't know what the announcement is, but you're speculating anyway instead of waiting a couple of days. What is this, CNN? Enough with this. I want news for nerds and stuff that matters, not circlejerking 24/7!
Found him aboard the Frigate HMS Rigging.
So they think they found the answer but now they need to find the question. Didn't we go through this before?
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
Are there any alternative theories to higgs boson, what's the status of them?
If we prove that the God Particle exists,[...]
Do you mean the Goddamn Particle ?
A great blog to read about the ongoing research and in depth particle physics articles is Matt Strassler's website: http://profmattstrassler.com/2012/06/27/this-sites-background-articles-on-the-higgs/
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
Since I am too lazy to RTFA and since some people here are surely smart in this field, can you answer this: is there a particle BEYOND the Higgs that will be looked for next? That is to say, "we" always think we have found the smallest particle/farthest object/oldest artifact/etc. but then we later realize there is something smaller/farther/older/heavier/etc. Can we expect that to happen here as well?
"may the force be with you, young skywalker"
in other news: still freaking looking for that ellusive neutrino thing, really.
...This decay would leave behind a ‘footprint’ ...
They've been finding Bigfoot foot prints for decades.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
So they are finally going to announcer their plans on building a time machine to take over the world?
Would the higgs taste better with ketchup or mustard?
http://www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/press_releases/2012/Higgs-Tevatron-20120702.html
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
To confirm a expected results. What else can this multi-billion dollar toy be used for?
You and the quarter might be nuked before it hits the ground. Ridiculously small probabilites still subtract from the probability you stated of 1
If nukes aren't part of your model, then they are not part of your model.
Probability is founded in set theory. Probabilities are assigned to events, which are sets of outcomes in you *defined* probability space.
It is a *model* that is *applied* to the world. In the model, 0 and 1 are real probabilities. That has nothing direct to do with the real world.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Remember when Templars took silver from America in the XII's and ruled Europe?
They're doing it again, in this underground new universe they've just created!
July 4th, 2012: the world declares high-end physics independence from the US Empire.
At least we're still cutting-edge when it comes to pipelines for tar sand.
The urge to anthropomorphize natural processes is apparently very strong
That mind contains different information processing centres that (surprise) process information in specialised ways. There is a module that sees everything as sentient, finding sentient causes and effects, and making predictions based on a model of personality. This module can be applied to /anything/, which is very cool if you think about it from a programming point of view. Since all the modules are always online (baring brain damage), you will see a person, and simultaneously model their personality and the physics of their body. (e.g., can they sit in that small chair?) You will see a higgs boson, and automagically assign some personality model to it.
If you close one eye, then you can see the entire universe as being nothing but sentience -- the very atoms conscious in some way.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
That's all I got. Just for the LOL's of it.
Pfft. Motorola had Six Sigma and that didn't stop them from tanking their profits...
Bow before me, for I am root.
They're going to announce that they didn't find a Higgs Boson where they expected it and that therefore nothing actually has mass. Hah, didn't see THAT coming, did you?!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I realize this is a cute 'correction' to establish your superiority, but it's wrong.
Sorry but you are very wrong - the avoirdupois pound came into use circa 1300. A quantitative understanding of mass came about several centuries later with Newton so I'd like to know how you come up with a unit for a concept which was not even thought of, let alone quantified, until 50-100 years later!
What you have just highlighted though is one of the (many) reasons why imperial units are stupid and inconsistent. The pound is a measure of weight which is a force otherwise you cannot explain the use of pounds per square inch as units for pressure. Imperial units use the slug as the unit of mass. Of course because everyone was using the SI system and people (incorrectly) regarded pounds and kilograms as equivalent units in the two systems were fixed by law in the 1960's effectively defining a weight using a mass which only works if you also assume a fixed value of gravitational field.
Moral of the story - imperial units are non-scientific, inconsistent and often have no agreed standard (e.g. pint) so use SI units!
The other tree sub atomic forces are at least 10^38 times stronger. Atoms are mostly empty space. It would be very rare for the black hole to get close enough to another particle to absorb it, much less a cascade of particles that would really enlarge a black hole. And particle size black holes evaporate very quickly.
If you spent ten billion, you better find it too.
What kind of asshole do you have to be to work on the day we celebrate the great defeat of the British bastards? A CERN physicist, apparently.
Me tinks there is a 99.99% chance they found zilch
Then they can keep the zilch mines and bupkis factories going.
Stop calling it the God Particle. That's not what the search is for and it riles up the fundies and happily-ignorants.
My kingdom for a donkey!
Wow, what an amazing "us too!" article. Basically, that press release says they could not see anything with any certainty, and they are waiting for the results of the LHC to say "oh yes, there it was all along!".
Tevatron lost funding, SSC lost funding, you lose the results, science loses. Go talk to your politicians.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
but, but... http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
This kind of pedantry is what annoys me about the way people teach physics.....Finding pointless minutia to criticize...
That's ok, this kind of willful ignorance annoys me! The difference between mass and weight is NOT "pointless minutiae" they are fundamentally different physical things - one which the Higgs boson can explain and one which it cannot. It cannot possibly be more central and critical to the topic being discussed! I get that you do not understand the difference between the two and it does not surprise me - this difference is subtle and hard to grasp and was something I struggled with when first learning physics. However to refuse to listen and learn and to continue to deny that the difference is important frankly puts you in the same willful-ignorance category as the creationists when they deny evolution because "they know better". You might _think_ you know better but if you'd open up your mind just a crack and go and look up what the difference between weight and mass and how that relates to the Higgs you might discover how wrong you are to dismiss the difference as "pointless minutiae".