LHC Discovers New Particle That Looks Like the Higgs Boson

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LHC Discovers New Particle That Looks Like the Higgs Boson

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday July 4, 2012 @12:48AM from the and-it-didn't-consume-the-earth dept.

The wait is over: new submitter Roger W Moore (among many, many other submitters) writes "The ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN have just announced the discovery of a new particle which is consistent with a Standard Model Higgs boson. There is still a lot of work to do to confirm whether this really is the Higgs, and if so whether it is a Standard Model Higgs, but this is a major result."

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Found at 125 GeV by hcs_$reboot · 2012-07-04 00:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

Does somebody mind to explain why a particle that gives mass is... that heavy? (no pun intended, just my total ignorance. Intuitively I'd thought it'd be very light, since it's used to give mass to other particles)

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1. Re:Found at 125 GeV by kievit · 2012-07-04 04:29 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Beware that there are 2 kinds of mass: (1) inertial mass and (2) gravitational mass. In principle, the Higgs particle helps explain the inertial mass, that is, the resistance of an object to a change in motion. Hence the (in my opinion somewhat poor) analogies of the Higgs field to a snow field or a bowl of syrup, where some particles are sticking into more deeply than others. It's only because of the equivalence principle that inertial and the gravitational mass are indeed "equivalent" (and quantitatively the same), which, if you think about it for long enough (or "too long" if you one of those people who think that all research should only be done for some practical purpose), is actually surprising.
Careful Announcement by Quantum_Infinity · 2012-07-04 00:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

I am glad they are being careful with their announcement and not jumping on it to claim 'I have found the Higgs Boson. Take that Tevatron!'
1. Re:Careful Announcement by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-04 01:03 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  I don't think they give a flying fuck about the Tevatron. Seriously.
Re:So... Now what? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-04 03:42 · Score: 1, Insightful

because you have to keep looking until you hit the elephants then it's turtles all the way down!
Re:Dr. Higgs himself said it best... by maxwell+demon · 2012-07-04 08:27 · Score: 3, Insightful

Science is that which, if you don't believe in it, doesn't go away.
No. Science is a method to gain knowledge about the world. Of course science can go away, as soon as nobody practices it any more.

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The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Re:No, not really by meekg · 2012-07-04 08:40 · Score: 3, Insightful

No, that's what we take from the Bison.
What the Bison gives us is shit - just like said politicians.