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Ask Slashdot: What Are the Implications of Finding the Higgs Boson?
PhunkySchtuff writes "OK, so we're all hearing the news that they've found the Higgs boson. What are some of the more practical implications that are likely to come out of this discovery? I realize it's hard to predict this stuff — who would have thought that shining a bright light on a rod of ruby crystal would have lead to digital music on CDs and being able to measure the distance to the moon to an accuracy of centimeters? If the Higgs boson is the particle that gives other particles mass, would our being able to manipulate the Higgs lead to being able to do things with mass such as we can do with electromagnetism? Will we be able to shield or block the Higgs from interacting with other particles, leading to a reduction in mass (and therefore weight?) Are there other things that this discovery will lead to in the short to medium term?"
We will find a way to blow stuff up with it. It's humanity's specialty, after all.
Will we be able to shield or block the Higgs from interacting with other particles, leading to a reduction in mass (and therefore weight?)
EOM
There will be an immediate and nearly catastrophic increase in the amount of bad science, pseudo-science and technobabble-based science fiction in popular media.
It could be years before the world recovers from this.
1)The Higgs diet. Eat whatever you want, you'll always weigh as much as you want!
2)A freakin' suitcase that no matter what I'm putting in, it will always weigh less than 20kg, 'cause FUCK YOU AIRPORTS AND YOUR EXTRA FEES.
Comic Sans in particular can be expected to become more popular.
We will be able to develop a new physics engine for Angry Birds.
I get my Hoverboard that's been long overdue!
"...would have lead to digital music..."
You used the word "lead" when you should have used the word "led". "Lead" is present tense. "Led" is past tense. Learn English grammar.
it will lead to tastier sandwiches.
Honestly. The hype on this Higgs-Boson quest is reaching nauseating levels. It's cool, but what of it? Will it give us world peace? Will it deliver flying cars? What about donuts? Doesn't anyone think about donuts anymore?!?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't think anything changes except that the model they've discovered years ago is in fact real.
To manipulate it's properties would would be something like LHC.
Plus, one you return it the higher state of symmetry, how do you generate a field to prevent symmetry from breaking?
returning it to symmetry would mean the particle becomes zero mass. If it's zero mass would it even interact with other particle in the way needed to hold 'large' objects together?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
now that its been discovered, all textbooks will have to be re-written and sold to students.
Teleportation
Warp Travel
Cure for aging
Phasers
Faster than light communication
Practical sub $1,000 quantum computers
Land Speeders
There are other more practical applications of applying higgs-boson technology but these are the most obvious.
Sudden, otherwise inexplicable increase in popularity of "Higgs" as a baby name.
God help us!
Invenio via vel creo
It validates the Higgs mechanism, which explains why elementary particles have mass. Now the Higgs boson is no longer considered hypothetical, likewise the Higgs mechanism and the Higgs field, mediated by the Higgs bosun. Speaking as a layman.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Personally I would love to have some Higgs sprinkles, for a more weighty donut that fills me up too.
We'll finally be able to invent that Hover Board everyone's been waiting for.
In and ever increasing expanding universe what the Higgs Boson means, as it verifies no energy is lost only transformed, is simple that we are going to expand into nothing eventually. Unless we can find a Clair Bosom to Fu& Higss and have new energy born.
Me thinks if we can apply mass to atoms, could we control the amount of mass... say use it to manufacture gold? or other precious elements?
INB4: The amount of energy required blah blah blah...
Someone already beat me to these but s/he was an anonymous coward so s/he doesn't count.
I listed phasers first cuz they're cooler.
the biggest innovation will be being able to control the mass then by adding or removing mass from matter and keeping it together thus you could have a cheat on faster then light travel
I would suspect if all that happened here is that the expected model was confirmed, that lots of research under the premise of the expected model being accurate would have already occurred/be taking place currently. I would think confirmation might just make it easier to get funding to do more. That said, I was itching to burn my mod points on anybody who responded with a non-joke answer. Ah well.
Of what use is a newborn child?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Full disclosure: I'm a physicist with some high energy/field theory in my background; but I stopped doing anything with high energy theory twenty years ago. Maybe someone who works in the field will disagree with me. And also, some of what I'm saying here I said on /. nine years ago, when someone asked what the practical implications were of experiments that were shedding light on the quark-gluon plasma, because my answer is close to the same.
With that said . . .I can't imagine any short (or even medium) term practical application. In fact, I can't even imagine practical value in the long term. Mind, it's certainly possible that down the road someone cleverer than I am will come up with something. In fact, that's the normal way in which major technological advances have occurred. For instance, Schottky wasn't trying to invent the transistor when he started studying the quantum behavior of transition metals. Michael Faraday didn't really see any public benefit to understanding electromagnetism, either. It's always worked like this: pure research has historically been without such obvious benefit.
But nevertheless, I don't want to suggest that that's the eventual result here, because I don't believe it will be. I think that would be disingenuous of me. I highly doubt that an improved understanding of Higgs physics will ever produce any wonderful and amazing technological advance. To me, the motivation is simply that understanding and knowledge -- especially of something like how the Universe got to be the way it is, and why it works the way it does -- is inherently a good thing. It has value by definition. Perhaps my least favorite thing about our society is that we are trained to evaluate the worth of things in terms of their economic value. Just like love, understanding has its own value, in my mind -- bereft of any "practical" value.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. To the best of our ability to tell, there's only one place where elements heavier than carbon (such as nitrogen, oxygen, sodium, etc. etc.) can be formed in large amounts -- and that's inside a star. Only elements as heavy as carbon or lighter can be formed in the early universe (and, for that matter, the amounts of Li, Be, B and C formed in Big Bang Nucleosynthesis are very very small); for heavier elements, and for larger amounts of carbon etc., you need a star. Now, if you didn't already know this, stop and think about it for a second. A huge chunk of you, perhaps all of you, was inside a star at one time. It appears that you and I are star debris. And it gets even better. The way that large amounts of these elements, forged within a star, can get out of the star is if the star supernovas -- dies at the end of its lifetime with a big boom. That big boom also serves to make very heavy elements -- such as uranium, for instance -- that cannot be made even in a star while it's burning away. There's uranium, and other similar very heavy elements, on our planet. Do you see what I'm getting at? Much of the atoms that make all of us up, that make this planet up, were at one time inside a star (or stars) that lived its life, supernovaed, and spewed out debris. Eventually, maybe a few hundred million years later, that stuff is part of our planet, part of our atmosphere, our water, part of you and me. We are all brothers and sisters; we all came from the same place, sorta.
Now, that knowledge will never make me any money. It will never have any practical benefit in my life. And yet, I consider myself immensely richer for knowing it.
Understanding has its own value.
What happens when M approaches 0...nothing...that's the problem. Let's say that we take out the "M", if we do then fundamental physics fails. The H-B particle if found should give us a path to removing it which would ultimately destroy cohesion of the substance in that if there is no mass then either there is no energy which would indicate bad things, or light speed becomes infinite, in which case our understanding of the universe is flawed...when does the Mayan calendar end? :)
http://chainsawsuit.com/2012/07/04/a-matter-of-grave-con-cern/
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
Notwithstanding the chatter about non-zero rest mass being related to the Higgs mechanism, an undermentioned fact is that 99% of the mass of all ordinary matter comes from strong force binding energy in protons and neutrons. E.g., look at the mass section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark
Twiddling with rest masses of quarks only twiddles with about 11/938ths = about 1% of the rest mass of nucleons. Some of the bias to neglecting this statistic is surely to help elevate in the popular mind the significance of results from the expensive LHC and standard model verification. Naturally, truly massless quarks and/or leptons would lead to major revisions of the standard model and all that. Still, it's just a bit disingenous to keep referring to the Higgs as the origin of "mass" with a bunch of celebrity analogies and whatnot. In the popular mind, mass is more akin to the effective mass of matter at rest (or in slow motion relative to the speed of light), and for that trait it is really strong force binding energy rather than Higgs interactions that creates almost all of it. Such poor analogies lead to weird comments like the original snippet above.
Maybe we'll discover a way of creating three-dimensional objects that have zero mass. Imagine something with the strength of the strongest alloys, but zero measurable mass. You'd have to add conventional matter to them as ballast, just to keep them from floating away! You could build massive structures from it, and they'd have a fraction of the mass of conventional buildings. You could have bicycles that weigh only a couple pounds. The possibilities would be endless, it would revolutionize everything.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The following is a way-out theory, thanks to a wonderful video game franchise called "Mass Effect":
Well, if we can figure out a way to change the mass of things by manipulating the Higgs Boson... Maybe we can make some sort of transportation device?
Could the Higgs be the "element zero" we need?
"Mass effect fields are created through the use of element zero. Element zero (Higgs?) can increase or decrease the mass content of space-time when subjected to an electrical current via dark energy. With a positive current, mass is increased. With a negative current, mass is decreased. The stronger the current, the greater the magnitude of the dark energy mass effect."
All we need to know now is if the Higgs affects space-time... Or if that even is a scientifically valid statement.
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Mass_effect_field
Personally I would love to have some Higgs sprinkles, for a more weighty donut that fills me up too.
Have you considered Lard Lad? He's the Bottom Line in Donuts!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This will open up vast new possibilities for porn parodies.
. . . from a book by Physicist Leonard Mlodinow:
Sure, the physics behind the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator in Switzerland, is a monument to the human mind. But so are the scale and complexity of the organization that build it -- one LHC experiment alone required more that 2,500 scientists, engineers, and technicians in 37 countries to work together, solving problems cooperatively in an ever-changing and complex environment. The ability to form organizations that can create such achievements is as impressive at the achievements themselves.
-- From his book "Subilminal"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I'm not down playing the significance of the potential assassination of Arafat, but this is one of the biggest scientific discoveries in the past 40 years. A few days coverage is not that crazy. It would be weird to not cover it. As for "what of it?", understanding what sort of universe we live in can have a very powerful effects. For example, understanding that the Earth orbits the sun or that creatures evolve or that space and time are not absolute fundamentally changed how a lot of people see themselves, religion, and their relationship to society. Those discoveries have really shaken up humanity. Does this discovery do that? No, probably not, but it may lead to some other discoveries that might do that. For example, in presentations on Higgs results I've attended, it has been suggested that if the mass of the Higgs is 125 GeV instead of 124 or 126 GeV, the vacuum may be unstable. Let me spell that out a little more clearly, space may be unstable. That's kind of a big deal.
Whoa, we are stardust?
So like Every atom in your body
Came from a star that exploded
You are all star dust
From a star that exploded
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Now, that knowledge will never make me any money. It will never have any practical benefit in my life. And yet, I consider myself immensely richer for knowing it.
Understanding has its own value.
Science based Spirituality?
I LIKE it! A spirituality that has facts to support it.
Instead of propelling vehicles by producing explosions and using the resultant mechanical force to create momentum, we will (someday) be able to directly convert stored energy into momentum.
We already can, just strap a rocket on the back.
Thermodynamics began in 1650, but the first air conditioner wasn't invented until 1820.
Maxwell's work on electrodynamics was published in 1861, but radio wasn't invented until 30 years later.
Quantum mechanics was first formulated in modern form in the 1920's, but the integrated circuit wasn't built until 1956.
Today, Higgs is a scientific curiosity, and a validation of the Standard Model. While I suspect it will take longer than 20 years for practical applications of Higgs to emerge, the science and engineering required to build the accelerator are already leading to breakthroughs in material science, computation, and engineering today. Today's accelerator is tomorrow's medical proton beam to cure cancer. And maybe, just maybe, the grandkids will get warp drive out of it.
Or, we could go bomb some more brown people and give more tax cuts to billionaires. Which seems like a better long-term investment?
But if we look long term, we might see warp drive, gravity shielding, or gravity generators. Right now, we can generate magnetic, electric, and electromagnetic fields, but we can not construct a circuit to generate either a positive or negative gravitational field. If would could generate a gravity field, we could produce one heck of a trash compactor or maybe even a component for a fusion reactor. If it turns out gravity has an opposite or negative, we could possibly make a gravity shieding and put it under 18-wheelers to make them more fuel efficient. I am sure the military is already interested in the weaponization of the Higgs. One we move beyond the parlour tricks and practical jokes we would move on to understanding the relationship between gravity, space, and time. Once we have mastered that, warp drive and serious space exploration could be in our future. Maybe even moon mining or asteroid mining.
Knowing that Higgs exists is only half the battle. Exploiting the Higgs and its properties for new applications are the second and equally difficult task. Right now we know about all sorts of subatomic particles, but sadly there are few applications.
I had to post anonymously today on this topic.
Well, at the energies required to manifest a Higgs boson, you will not be likely to routinely do it in your living room...
The most likely *practical* applications of any LHC results (of which higgs is only one example) will be in the field of large scale fusion energy production.
It's proove that long hard work can pay off. :-)
A Nobel award is given to at most 3 people. But in modern times theoretical research is not something that a single person does in their basement .. so there are 6 people (actually one is deceased - so isn't eligible because of that) who could make a claim for the glory. See higgs-boson-nobel-prize-headache for a better run down on all of this.
Interestingly Higgs wasn't the first to publish on this subject. And I heard yesterday on NPR from a former student of Higgs who suggested he wanted to call it the "God Damned Particle" - but it seems that the name went all PC.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Thanks for posting.
which would subtract mass, allowing for negative mass and thus faster-than-light travel. Someone write sci-fi around that, sounds sweet.
IANAP (I am not a physicist), but I do know that the speed-of-light limit is mass-related. Massless particles move at the speed of light, particles with mass move at up to the speed of light.
Could it not be true that particles with negative mass move above lightspeed? I know tachyons are at least theorized, although I'm not sure if they're supposed to have negative mass or if they have some other relativistic loophole.
Now, assuming the above is true, couldn't the manipulation of the Higgs field result in negative mass? We obviously have no method, right now, of doing so, but wouldn't that at least be plausible?
We can't even directly detect the thing; we have to infer its existence from the decay of other particles. I'd say it will be a while before we use it to blow shit up.
It appears that you and I are star debris.
Speak for yourself. I'm big bang debris.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
This could lead to a new diet fad and a weight loss pill!!!
I'm not by any means a particle physicist - but doesn't this deal a blow to some other theories? Like wasn't supersymmetry an alternate explanation for mass in the event that the Higgs field wasn't the right mechanism? ie, confirming the Higgs field eliminates the "problem" supersymmetry was designed to solve? I thought I also read that maybe some aspects of string theory are also affected similarly... Maybe someone here much smarter than I can explain it to us in layman's terms :)
The research team will be in the running for a Nobel prize, and of course they would generate large numbers of published articles that will enhance their work metrics and keep them in "most favor researcher" status with their research institute. Not to mention, the additional travel to conferences and an increased amount of celebrity for the principle scientists.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Not necessarily fall as in need revision, but we know this already. The basic matter/force particles have been known for a while, except Gravity. We couldn't find any particle that linked us to mass, the search for the Higgs was just that, a search for an explanation for mass.
However, we know just based on observing the heavens (where all science truly begins), that it doesn't end at gravity . There are clearly forces out there that we didn't predict with our current models, namely dark matter/dark energy. It is currently theorized that dark matter is a manifestation (of fields/particles) that we currently do not have in the "Standard" model. The Standard model was doomed as soon as we discovered that galaxies are accelerating away from each other.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
He's given a few, but the longest one, he shows a page full of equations, with terms expanded, and says something like "this is how the forces relate" then admits to cheating because there is one wildcard on the page: H. And now we know that sheet he showed us is indeed correct.
This will sure up the model, but we are still left asking how does gravity work? With this identified as the mechanism, we can devise some experiments and learn more about G, which has the most awesome applications of all.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Finding Higgs boson (or proving it's predicted existence) may not yield any practical implication. However, having many thousand of the brightest and smartest engineers and scientists working close together, and collaborating on singe (or multiple) endeavors like this (and similar others) surely brings many practical things to life. Say, for example, World Wide Web, which, coincidently was "discovered" precisely in CERN, so that you and me can today read and write in more casual manner then using old-fashioned telnet (vt100 emulated), or using ftp or gopher, and whatnot. Even technology used in building CERN's fine detectors is engineering marvel, pieces made just for that task, so surely many innovative approaches were used. In that sense, Higgs boson is the goal, but much more important, in my opinion is how to reach that goal. Along that path there are many other, much more practicable discoveries. Whether or not we'll some day be able to carry around gadgets capable of producing few TeV of energy (as finding Higgs with 125 GeV necessitates having an order of magnitude or more source energy) who knows. So far the only such "gadget" is in CERN, uses exorbitant amount of electricity, radiates all around profusely when turned on, etc. But hey, as one said, if "laser" was first cumbersome, but now it's everywhere, the who knows...
Pffft, I eat big bang debris for breakfest.
http://stoploudness.org/
It will be several years before they confirm that this is actually the Higgs boson. What they've found is an unidentified particle that is, hopefully and to the best of their knowledge, the Higgs. There is a tremendous difference, and there's no use in getting excited about possibilities until some very basic particle properties are established in the next few years. You're counting eggs before they're hatched.
What this could lead to, if this is in fact the Higgs boson, is anti-gravity tech, Star Trek style replicators, and an understanding of dark matter - which vastly outnumbers "normal" matter and could lead anywhere or nowhere. String theory, infinite energy? Maybe.
At the rate that high-energy physics works at, you won't see any of this in your lifetime. Progress takes decades. High energy physics doesn't exactly have a great track record for translating discoveries into practical devices. Neutrino detectors come to mind, but those ain't exactly mainstream and have limited practical applications.
They didn't actually announce that they found the Higgs boson. Rolf Heuer said "... we have a discovery... [that is] consistent with a Higgs boson." [emphasis mine]
Now, I'm not trying to nitpick. There is a subtle but very real difference. They did not announce 5+ sigma evidence that they found the Higgs. What they announced that they have 5-sigma evidence that they found a particle. Which, so far, seems to be consistent with the Higgs.
While they are pretty sure it looks like a Higgs, what they announced was the discovery of a particle. It remains to be seen whether it is the Higgs boson or not. It looks probable, because the mass and longevity are consistent with predicted values for the Higgs.
BUT... they haven't seen any of the other properties yet. Until they do, they won't know whether it's the Higgs.
But just keep in mind: that's NOT what they said. What they found was "a particle" We'll have to know more before we decide for sure whether it's the Higgs. It appears very probable, but we must make the distinction.
I'm just curious what the LHC will be doing now/next, assuming it really is the Higgs.
Society had to pay for this research. And it may be a good thing and have value as a purely intellectual pursuit (value is not the same as money). But society's resources are finite. It has to make choices on how to use those resources. The wise thing to do is to use those resources on things that have greater value.
Or to put it another way: is this the best use of talented minds and piles of money? Couldn't the same have been used on other branches of physics with greater result? Areas equally profound, esoteric, and with of little immediate benefit, but several areas instead of just one?
Now expand the uses to other fields of science. Or solutions to more immediate problems that, if not solved, may make any long term benefit of understanding the Higgs particle irrelevant?
Gotta think of value. Gotta compare it. Gotta make decisions.
The thing with practical implications is.... the theory has been around for a while. If there was any practical implication of the higgs boson existing then there would be an easier way to test... you simply do whatever it is that the theory predicts, yet other theories don't. If it works, then you have a data point validating the theory and an extra nail in the coffin of others. If it fails, then you have the opposite.
The problem here is that there are no practical implications, to the point that, the only way to devise a test involved miles of underground tunnel and huge, expensive, very precise equipment....and it doesn't get much less practical than that.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089114/plotsummary
They made an inertia free passenger type vehicle. This stuff always reminds me of that :)
I'm 99% sure I don't know exactly what a Higgs Boson does, as everyone seems to have their own definitions.
I'm going with quasi ether for now.
In a related story, creativity and productivity at CERN goes down by 200%.
Seriously, though, it would seem like in theory, fun things such as the actual mass related stuff in Mass Effect (but not crazy stuff like biotics) may finally be on the horizon.
Fun, and potentially scary, times ahead.
Have they really confirmed it's existence? Or are they still dancing around pretending to know what they're looking for?
IMHO when you start off with a flawed premise and write one thing after another trying to shore it up, and spend billions in an attempt to "prove" it, I would (hope) that the "proof" is as compelling as the theory!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Amazing, as soon as we discover something new about our universe, there, we have this irresistible urge to go and mess with it, even if we understand nothing at all about it.
Would it be possible to just hold on for a minute and see if the "use" of this new knowledge might be less obvious, less appropriated by our perennial self-serving attitude?
Something entirely new presents to us, and we respond in the same way as the neolithic man. Or a monkey. Duh.
From reading the 'popular science' explanations the Higgs field and Higgs Boson is what gives everything else mass. So if we can find a way of turning off' the interaction with the Higgs Field we suddenly remove all mass, inertia, weight etc. There are doubtless guys out there much smarter than I am who will be able to tell why this won't work, but if it does then it's our big stepping stone to the rest of the solar system and ultimately the stars.
Fact that vacuum is consistently seething and spawning virtual particles is observable experimentaly. Ythe higgs doesn't change that. Afaik, finding the boson may hold comsequences for supersymmetry.
That particle really ties the room together, man.
Nicely said. But it troubles me, If most of what makes me up was created in the heart of a star. Why does it feel like I'm burning up when it's 103' F outside? You'd think I'd be freezing my genitals off.
Thanks for the reply though. I think it's the best bit of truthful science we've heard in a while.
DS
I need my hoverboard NOW!
In the long term, understanding the universe has always paid off. In the meantime, neglecting any long-term payoff, you can consider the $7.5b of the LHC at worse a neutral waste of money.
Take a look at what we spend on wars.
Take a look at what we spend preparing for wars.
Take a look at what we spend bulking up, hoping to scare the other guy out of wars.
Take a look at what we spend on drugs, medicating ourselves because we find reality too boring. (For those not enthralled by LHC, space travel, etc.)
Take a look at what we spend trying to keep the aforementioned people from buying drugs, because it offends our moral sensibilities.
The list could go on forever, most of these things quite negative...
and you want to pick on science and understanding the Universe as a waste?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
"Perhaps my least favorite thing about our society is that we are trained to evaluate the worth of things in terms of their economic value. Just like love, understanding has its own value, in my mind -- bereft of any "practical" value. "
"Understanding has its own value. "
Mods, feel free to mod this OT, as it has nothing to do with physics, but since the parent brings this up I feel compelled to offer my $0.02.
It is perfectly valid to maintain a dichotomy of material / non-material values. However, just as human beings possess both a consciousness and a physical body by nature, we have both material and non-material values as part of our nature.
I would posit that since the capacity for reason is our defining characteristic, and our most fundamental tool for survival, that all knowledge, whether you can think of a marketable business application or not, has value and there is no is no difference between "economic" / "practical" value and any other type.
Money is a tool for exchange, as such it exists as a means to our survival. However, as stated, reason is our primary tool. Economies are simply a consequence of applying reason to the production of material sustenance and then trading the results of that production with other people. Knowledge is primary to all of that.
So whether or not you can think of a business application for studying theoretical physics, or any "purely intellectual / academic" pursuit, it has value because knowledge is a requisite for the application of reason, and reason is our tool for survival. Markets and economies are consequences of that. So there is no difference between "economic value" or "academic value." It all has "practical" value because it all contributes towards our understanding of our environment (the universe) and consequently our survival.
Not everything moves at lightspeed.
Remember that old anime series? ;)
Maybe we'll finally have our boson jump technology.
As a non-physicist myself, I ask if that a fair example. There seems to be, in my mind, a difference between a theory of explanation, and a theory from experimentation. A theory of explanation rarely leads to life changing concepts. Your example was . . . exemplary. A theory from experimentation often is changed by witnessing different results, possibly opening up new ideas. I think this is where our "practical" applications come from. I don't base this on any data; it's just my opinion. Maybe I am too biased with the pursuit of knowledge, that I cannot separate practical from not practical, but I think there may be great potential here. Probably because I'm basing this on pure ignorance!
This is a good post, and expresses valid concerns.
As far as the best use of talented minds, I think the best use of a talented mind is generally not to tell them what problem to work on, but rather to let them decide for themselves. If you take a smart person, and give them a problem to work on that they have no interest in or love for, and you order them to do something brilliant and creative . . .generally, they won't.
Money, OTOH, is another matter. You're absolutely right that resources are finite, and that sometimes we have to make tough decisions. That's very pertinent to this discussion, because we made such a decision almost twenty years ago when we decided not to build the SSC, which would likely have answered all the questions the LHC can a long time ago, and other stuff too. But we decided we couldn't afford it; and maybe that was the right decision. All I can really say in response is that we absolutely should ask the kind of questions you're asking, and we do; and sometimes the folks in control of the money say "yea" and sometimes "nay," and rarely does everyone agree. Any one of us can think that a funding decision or decisions should have played out differently (for or against a line of research); but the mechanism for asking those questions and using the answers to motivate the funding decisions does exist.
We are all brothers and sisters; we all came from the same place, sorta.
Now, that knowledge will never make me any money. It will never have any practical benefit in my life. And yet, I consider myself immensely richer for knowing it.
Sure it will. Start a hokey religion based on that knowledge, and you'll have more money than you know what to do with.
I think the central problem is actually that I'm a certified idiot and I don't even understand what "mass" is. Look at the photon it is supposed to have no mass cause if it did its energy would be infinite.
Yet the photon convinently still has "momentum" so its not mass but it sure behaves like something that does anyway.
My understanding is if you bottled up a bazillion photons and put the bottle on a scale and weighted it ... it would also be heavier and experience/exert the same gravitiational influence as matter thanks to E=MC^2.
So I'm confused as to how it is even possible to define "mass" in a way that does not also fit all the measurable properties of a photon.
Then we have neutrinos which change as they propogate so of course they must have mass yet nobody has ever been able to detect any difference in velocity between neutrinos and photons..including those ejected from infamous 1987 supermova having raced photons for 168k years.
While I'm sure the math works to make predictions I'm not so confident about the translation to english.
After reading headlines and wikipedia articles I'm no closer to understanding what the fuck higgs means that E=MC^2 already does not say.
If there is no coupling between photons and the higgs then photons have no mass... and the difference between having "mass" and not having "mass" is what?
... for ages.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Higgs Boson?
Why longer firework shows of course!
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
You've never actually been good at trolling, but that was weak even by your standards.
Notice that the duration of each period that you have cited above grows increasingly short. These durations do not appear to be consistent with any obvious mathematical description, but Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns implies that we might very well see benefits from research on Higgs' phenomena within our (natural, non-extended) lifetimes.
Actually elements up to iron can be made in a star. Elements heavier than iron can only be created in a supernova. This is because a star can fuse lighter elements into heavier ones, up to iron. Iron cannot be fused into heavier elements without energy, lighter elements when fused release energy, and so keep the star going. But once the star has started to make iron, it starts to loose energy while gaining mass. Eventually the energy output cannot keep up with the force of gravity from the increasing mass in the star's core and then the star 'implodes'. This is one form of a supernova.
"It appears that you and I are star debris" extremely poetic, you should trade mark that now before the song writer trolls emerge.
The only implications are for other scientific theories, and even if we knew which one of them would be confirmed (we don't), it would be pretty long-term.
We've discovered what looks like a royal tomb in Egypt where we expect to find King Tut's tomb. Which is great news, but we haven't yet looked inside and confirmed that it is King Tut's tomb. Or read any of the hieroglyphs on the walls. We just know that there almost certainly are heiroglyphs on the walls, which will tell us something new and interesting. Thus, the excitement.
Back to the Higgs, now that we've found it, we can start measuring it, and see which of the various theories about how it should behave are correct.
Basically, there's a huge problem in high-energy physics right now that there haven't been any remarkable new observations in a long time (we've just been confirming predictions for decades), giving theorists nothing to chew on. They've come up with all sorts of interesting theories, but they've been getting more and more speculative in the absence of any unexpected observations to work with.
With the Higgs, there's already a tempting hint of unexpected physics: H-to-two-photons decays are happening more often than expected, while H-to-WW are happening less often. So far, the difference is small enough to plausibly be just a statistical fluke, but both ATLAS and CMS observed the same fluke, which is starting to get into suspiscious-coincidence category.
The hope is that it will give us a theory of quantum gravity, which will tell us how the universe started. That has a chance of having practical implications, but until I know which theory is confirmed, I couldn't begin to speculate.
You never spoke to Helmut Bakaitis?
That was fucking poetry, is what that was!
Because someone will have filed patents on any ideas based on it and nobody will do R&D as a result.
If suddently you start running or biking 27 Km a day, you will slowly avoid the effect of the higgs boson, and get less massive.
Slashdot editors get to put up a half-dozen front-page "articles" on it in an attempt to increase page views.
Come on, guys. There are already tons of posts on the Higgs in the Science section. And that thing about Texas was so blindingly obvious that it's just there for page views it is insulting to your readership. There's no need to post yet another post, this time a stupid question in Ask Slashdot, just because it's got the word "Higgs" in it.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Applications for mass/gravity manipulation are possible some speculate. But not necessarily due to Higgs.
Cosmologist Marcus Chown says of the "Quantum Vacuum Intertia Hypothesis" work of Calphysics.org: (From http://calphysics.org/articles/chown2007.html)
"Haisch is perfectly prepared to believe that the rest mass of a particle - its mass-energy - is "explained" by the Higgs mechanism and that the rest mass is intrinsic to the particle. However, Haisch believes that the inertial mass and gravitational mass of a particle are not explained by the Higgs mechanism and are not intrinsic. If they are not intrinsic then there is only one other option. They must be "extrinsic". "In other words, they must somehow arise from the interaction between a particle and the environment through which it moves," says Haisch. "That environment can only be the 'quantum vacuum'."
This might explain why the Higgs mass is small. Haisch's theory suggests a mechanism similar to the Higgs effect, but relies on Zero Point Field Quantum Fluctuations instead of The Higgs Boson, and the Electromagnetic Quantum Vacuum instead of the Higgs field. But their work also tantalizingly suggests that Gravity appears to be the same phenomenon, but behaving differently in the presence of warped space-time.
So if mass (inertial, gravitational, and rest), is a function of either Quantum fluctuations or Higgs bosons, then it might be possible to manipulate not only mass, but also gravity.
By Clarke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God), humanity will now be retired and replaced with a different experiment.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
You sound like the guy that invented moving big rocks by rolling them on top of tree trucks, he was against further investments in fundamental science that later led to the invention of the wheel.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Why the "Ob Faraday" title? The comment is from Ben Franklin. He was observing one of the first balloon flights by the Montgolfier Bros in France, and replied to the question 'What good is it?' from another observer.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
... will be a device that makes the girls' locker room walls invisible!
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
Furthermore, such knowledge may or may not be true... which we can only say is certain within a range of probability.
I think we're all missing the most practical application of the Higgs - curing childhood obesity
Not withstanding anything else - I like and appreciate your use of the word "Boson", as opposed to "boson".
we don't care if you were conceived at an orgy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What will we see? Manipulation of gravity on an unprecedented scale: Cities as a whole will lift off into space!
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Not only the above, but the atoms that make up your left hand probably came from a different star to those that make up your right.
as said by Lawrence Krauss
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Just suck all the Higgs particles out of the object. Then, it has no mass and can be transported at the speed of light. At the destination, fill it back up with Higgs particles.
Just like dehydrating and rehydrating a pizza. Simple!
Which would be awesome if Kurzweil's law wasn't crap.
seriously, he only applies it to specific domains, young domains, never older domain that have gone past their intial accelerated development period.
It's also nice to see he doesn't understand evolution~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually elements up to iron can be made in a star. Elements heavier than iron can only be created in a supernova. This is because a star can fuse lighter elements into heavier ones, up to iron. Iron cannot be fused into heavier elements without energy, lighter elements when fused release energy, and so keep the star going. But once the star has started to make iron, it starts to loose energy while gaining mass. Eventually the energy output cannot keep up with the force of gravity from the increasing mass in the star's core and then the star 'implodes'. This is one form of a supernova.
Right. That's why, in the post to which you replied, I wrote "That big boom also serves to make very heavy elements -- such as uranium, for instance -- that cannot be made even in a star while it's burning away."
Thank you.
And thank you even more for sharing your wealth.
Anonymous
Faith is the belief in what is unseen. Science need not operate on the basis of faith.
No. Science DOES not operate on the basis of faith. And just because you pose a question like, "Who created the universe?" doesn't mean there is an answer, no matter how much you try to define a metric that will measure the magnitude of your desire.
I suggest you take your belief in creationism back to an elementary level and leave your judgment to your creator.
with that said in fact mind in fact for instance but nevertheless to me perhaps in my mind let me give you an example to the best of our ability to tell for that matter now perhaps all of you such as uranium for instance eventually maybe now and yet
I cheated on a physics exam once. There was a question about radiation pressure - a 5mW laser is reflected off a perfect mirror, what's the pressure exerted on the mirror. Now I missed the lecture on radiation pressure where they talked all about electromagnetic stuff and derived an equation for this. So I computed the mass equivalent of 5mJ of energy and then the impulse it would produce from bouncing off the mirror with a deltaV of 2C. Impulse/Time = Force. Got the answer correct while neglecting to show most of the work (might get marked down). Only later used the same method to derive the same general formula rather than a specific case. So light acts as a particle with mass moving at speed C. You can also arrive at this conclusion from other angles like allowing Energy/Mass conversion along with the conservation of the CG of a system (If I convert an object to energy and beam it to the other side of a room and convert it back, there must be a reaction force, the CG of the system must not move etc...). Light MUST behave this way. This also means that matter must also be gravitationally attracted to photons. But yes, there are plenty of ways "massless" photons behave much like particles with mass, and yet they don't contain any Higgs.
I don't think physics has an answer to your question, nor a number of questions I have.
If the mass of the higgs boson likes at the right spot around 125 GeV then this is true, the vacuum may be unstable. I keep hearing people say the Standard Model needs to be fixed in this case, but does it? We are observing the universe undergoing accelerating expansion. Maybe we are already witnessing the result of an unstable vacuum.
In other words, the universe may be exploding right now.
People have always starved in some part of the worlds but we never knew about high energy physic before last century and as a side effect it brought us the web *1. So to me this was money well spent. People are insignificant at universal scale; knowledge is not as it contribute immensely in the Sisyphean fight to organize the results of the all mighty entropy.
1- web != net
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
Let me give you an example of what I mean. To the best of our ability to tell, there's only one place where elements heavier than carbon (such as nitrogen, oxygen, sodium, etc. etc.) can be formed in large amounts -- and that's inside a star. Only elements as heavy as carbon or lighter can be formed in the early universe (and, for that matter, the amounts of Li, Be, B and C formed in Big Bang Nucleosynthesis are very very small); for heavier elements, and for larger amounts of carbon etc., you need a star. Now, if you didn't already know this, stop and think about it for a second. A huge chunk of you, perhaps all of you, was inside a star at one time. It appears that you and I are star debris. And it gets even better. The way that large amounts of these elements, forged within a star, can get out of the star is if the star supernovas -- dies at the end of its lifetime with a big boom. That big boom also serves to make very heavy elements -- such as uranium, for instance -- that cannot be made even in a star while it's burning away. There's uranium, and other similar very heavy elements, on our planet. Do you see what I'm getting at? Much of the atoms that make all of us up, that make this planet up, were at one time inside a star (or stars) that lived its life, supernovaed, and spewed out debris. Eventually, maybe a few hundred million years later, that stuff is part of our planet, part of our atmosphere, our water, part of you and me. We are all brothers and sisters; we all came from the same place, sorta.
Now, that knowledge will never make me any money.
You might not be able to figure out how to make money, but Moby appears to have done well with it.
Craig Milo Rogers
My patented formula strips your body of all its Higgs-bosons!
Probably a black hole if they figure out why it doesn't balloon to a trillion times its size when interacting with other particles. Soon as they figure out what's counteracting that and remove it, everything will be sweet sweet gravy--and utter non-existent bliss. Into the void!
I can think of at least four long-term things that the LHC could be used for after, or along with conducting valuble research into the nature of our universe.
...as soon he realizes Amy Farrah Fowler is Higgs Blossom
Revise that one? Energy equals mass times light speed squared (even if it is the reduced version of the equation)? What if you were able to take out mass from that equation? As in... reduce the mass, up the speed...
I expect a new wave a penis enlargement pills touting their new super-duper ingredient, Higgs Boson, GUARANTEED to make your tool MASSIVE.
A Higgs Boson walks into a church..... The priest says, "we don't accept your kind here" The Higgs Boson says... "but without me, you can not have mass!"
if we could force the "99%" to (1) work, (2) quit expecting government handouts, (3) quit thinking that 19th century French Lit. degree "deserves" the same pay as an MBA, and (4) pay taxes themselves (48% do not, in this country), THEN you'd have everybody paying their "fair share".
Right now we have "representation without taxation" for too many folks.
I'm just waiting for the L'Oreal advert that claims the newly added multi-peptides will decrease the levels of higgs boson in you epidermis and reduce the mass of your wrinkles.
I wonder if Higgs field could serve as something to push against, spending only energy, and not having to carry the propellant mass with you in space travel? Just a wild guess by a complete layman. This could make sending probes to nearby stars a bit more realistic.
THIS.
This comment, is why I read Slashdot.
Thanks a lot for your insight and knowledge sharing, it made my day =)
Now just think about how many people from various countries came together to make something as simple as a pencil. And it did not require any direction from one person or entity to do that.
Stephen Wolfram has an interesting article giving his thoughts on the progression of particle physics and where he thinks it might be headed. http://motls.blogspot.com/2012/07/stephen-wolfram-on-higgs-particle.html
...am still looking forward to riding my hover skateboard.
As wit so many findings in the natural sciences, i think that the practical (future) use of discovering the Higgs boson does not come from the discovery itself, but from its side effects.
Having the Higgs, you can measure it, study it and learn from it. You can test hypotheses and falsify others. Maybe the discovery will lead to a more comprehensive theory of particle physics, which in turn will predict new phenomena than could be exploited. Maybe the LHC finds even more than the Higgs particle, which could revolutionize physics (dark matter???). And if not, it could revolutionize physics as well (e.g. supersymmetry would be rather challenged).
But the first practical applications will start from another point: the thousands of scientists involved do much more than just hunt a particle. On their way they create machines, devices, components, programs, algorithms which can be utilized in totally different areas; in science as well as in industry. The internet itself is a technology born from particle physics - as a side effect of searching new particles.
Lets say this science has no value at all beyond entertainment value ("wow, that's cool, I never knew that"). It's really not so expensive as entertainment budgets go, if you look at how many nations and years it's spread across. We piss away far greater sums of money on far more frivolous pursuits. If we're looking for places to conserve "societies resources", fundamental physics research simply isn't the low hanging fruit!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It'll be marketed as the ultimate weight loss pill.
I mean, all you have to do is attach a machine larger and more powerful than the Large Hadron Collider to your rocket ship and then you can manipulate mass. A little bit.
Most of Physics has been working with the model that it does exist for decades now. There would have been a LOT of impact if it didn't exist. This is a "OK, it looks like what we thought was true"
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
I guess there goes CERN and all those PRON from CERN servers
This guy, at minutephysics, produces great minute long vidoes explaining physics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Uh5mTxRQcg&feature=g-all-u
This one is part one, or a three part (not all released yet) series. If you want to know more, watch it. It won't be a waste of your time. However, watching all the rest of his good videos might consume a few hours :)
Forgive me if I wait for a while for the retraction... they were 99.9% sure of their faster-than-light neutrinos, so I'll call this bullshit until they say they're 100% sure they found the higgs.
I think that practical applications often only become available once a lot of information is known about something because many many diverse sets of laws and rules must work together to form a practical application.
It's like if I take a Spanish one course, I may learn a little bit of Spanish and the practical applications maybe slight only under very specific circumstances (ie: if I happen to be at the right place at the right time). but, for the most part, its use is very useless. I can't get a job as a translator. But when I take multiple years of Spanish then I have the knowledge necessary to benefit from my new found language. I can finally put it on my resume that I speak Spanish and it can take me far. Put on your resume that you only took a single Spanish class and see where it gets you (by itself).
Same thing applies with many sciences. You must really know the 'language' really well to be able to really use and benefit from it. Otherwise, taking a single class often doesn't have very much practical applications.
I was really looking forward to clicking on this link hoping to find some intelligent conversation about this topic but once again Slashdot has disappointed me with nothing but stupid threads where people are just making jokes.
"The particle of God". I now know that Christianity and English language are incompatible (and I really doubt I will change my mind), but this name sounds like a trial to go back to many Gods or TowerOfBabylon 2.0 is closer than I thought. Who knows, who cares.
Back in the 80's everything was swell. I had a job, programming in Pascal, was up to speed on the PULTICS and had a 16 processor iAPX842 (iAPX432 compatible) system. Range checking was on, all files were records, and we had structured data everywhere. I had a background in interest in physics and so I spent my time down in Texas working with the SSC which after a small funding battle got built. It was really groovy - boy those supercondicting magnets were awesome. So one day after a couple of beers, celebrating the Red Sox (I went to MIT) kicking the Yankees ass yet again (Poor Yankees fans) I fall asleep infront of my Sinclair flatscreen TV.
I wake up and discover my 16 processor iAPX 864 is gone. Instead there's this CPU thats something weird called RISC and can barely add two numbers. The Red Sox suck and the Yankees have won, and the SSC was never built. My dog was a cat and to make things worse president Howard Stern was now a shock-jock and that Reagan Actor was the President.
My beloved PULTICS which checked everything was now called UNIX and written in C (With no sanity checking). The R2000 was great at running C but mostly sucked at my beloved Pascal and instead of a rat I now had a mouse that you had to use your hand to move rather than your foot. No longer could I touch type while moving my rat around with my foot. Now I had to stop typing and grab the mouse.
I just can't take it any more. Shut it down. I don't want to end up programming fluidic logic computers in SNOBOL and neither do you!
To the best of our ability to tell, there's only one place where elements heavier than carbon (such as nitrogen, oxygen, sodium, etc. etc.) can be formed in large amounts -- and that's inside a star.
To the best of YOUR abilities to tell, maybe. I have it on good authority that they can also be formed in large amounts in the mind of God.
It doesn't have to consume the entire universe.
I've long thought that gamma-ray bursts -- those unexplained explosions that happen in distant galaxies, and are much more energetic than supernovae -- are the "oopses" of alien civilizations experimenting with really potent physics that they don't fully understand.
As I understand it, these bursts can sterilize the better part of a galaxy. I'm not a luddite, but let's apply a little caution and try not to end up like those poor sods.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
All you appear to be saying is that you haven't applied your imagination to the discovery. This is when you may see something coming from this. It's how it always goes
My conclusion is that I AM AS SMART AS ALBERT EINSTEIN.
My reality is a wonderful reality, care to visit?
I suspect that if you were subjected to the "Total Perspective Vortex", you would come out feeling pretty good.
I feel a disturbance in the force
E = MC squared (sorry, Alt + 253 comes out fine in edits here, shitty in preview & submit)
(Energy = Mass x The speed of light, squared)
Remove mass to a negligible state in said equation (or, @ least make it a lesser term, with less (pardon the pun) "weight", what happens to said equation (and matter WITH MASS)... this is where the math & physics nuts are being TOO DAMN EXACTING & restricted by their own methods + freakishness about precision (some terms here ARE NEGLIGIBLE & they'll find it out thru this), keep reading:
In fact? For kicks - Use zero as MASS/M, play with the equation, you'll see what I mean!
Clue: Matter itself, having mass can't get to the "pure energy state" as easily, AND THUS, travel @ the speed of light or exceed it, right?
So - what IF you lessen that part of the term, if not "zero" it??
That's where you're going I am assuming - manipulation of mass @ that level, lessening the effect of that term!
C 'squared' = E/M
The speed of light "squared" = Energy divided by mass
However - Division by zero = undefined, right?
I.E.-> Having mass or rather, being MATERIAL, is the 'clue' here!
BUT - Energy can move that fast, matter can't because of mass... pull the matter's mass (higgs field manipulation), or make it SO "lesser", you can get MEGA CLOSE to the speed of light... albeit, in an ENERGY state.
They're asking the wrong question, & a particle's NOT what they actually should be looking for (rather a God "wave").
Think about that, bookmark this in your favorites for posterities' sake, & around, oh, 10++ yrs. from now, refer to it... this will be the 'key' to "hyperdrive" (warp speed), antigrav technology, and matter transmitters (teleportation).
What about s-process nucleosynthesis on the asymptotic giant branch? There's no supernova involved, but elements heavier than iron are created by neutron capture. About half of the heavy elements in the modern Universe were created this way.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
nevertheless we do practical things with nuclear transmutation, from medical applications to electronics (-quiz question) to power plants. And we make practical use of particles other than electron, proton, neutron and photon.
You've violated the conservation of momentum. There is no need to answer the second part of your statement because it is irrelevant. Remember F = dp/dt.
You have not violated any conservation law. First look at what you just wrote: F = dp/dt. So if there is an external force acting on the system dp/dt !=0 i.e. the rate of change of momentum is not zero. Only a system with no external forces has a constant momentum. An even easier way to see that there is no problem (classically at least): reduce the mass while at rest when v=0 this way momentum remains a constant zero before and after.
However the whole premise is flawed because only 0.1% of the mass of a proton or neutron (which is where almost all the mass of atoms comes from) is due to the Higgs. So, even if you could shield something from the Higgs its mass would decrease by 0.1% but all the energy states of the electrons would change due to their suddenly relativistic nature so the chemistry of the object would radically alter which is probably not a good thing to have happen.
There is ALWAYS a gravitational field.
Not true. The gravitational field of a mass may stretch out forever but there is nothing to stop you from placing a second mass such that its gravitational field precisely cancels the first gravitational field at a single point. At this point there will be zero gravitational field.
Yet when we observe something that doesn't match up with our predictions, we never take that as evidence that the universe is unpredictable.
Yes we do - that's exactly what happened with Quantum Mechanics! There is NO requirement in science that the universe be predictable, only that that the nature of that unpredictability be predictable!
Also if you fly in executive class, you can carry bags of unlimited mass.
Not quite - you only get 32kg/bag, same as if you are a frequent flyer. So, by causing me to fly to CERN frequently, the Higgs has managed to increase my baggage allowance from 1x23 kg to 1x32 kg + 2x23 kg. Unfortunately, were you ever to be able to turn off the Higgs field, it would only decrease the mass of your bag by 0.1% (and radically alter their chemistry) so I think the frequent flyer route is definitely the most practical!
All this fuss about the font choice makes me more and more certain that we really are descended from the Golgafrincham B Ark. If Douglas Adams rewrote the Hitchhikers Guide today it would probably go:
Arthur: "...but you haven't even found the Higgs boson yet!"
Golgafrincham: "Oh we discovered that years ago but we are still trying to find the optimal font and colour scheme to present the result with"
What Where How Who and Why all bring us closer to Create, always. Even in the Abstract. Therefore a discovery will always have material or abstract benefit. This comment seems very short sighted to me.
I'd like to lose some weight...
...defeat rachni, genophage krogan and seduce asari. Love it :D:D:D
Apple is already drawing up the papers to sue CERN for patent infringement for:
Using a ring shaped subterranean tube to accelerate substances to high velocities for the purpose of identifying new particles that can prefixed with a letter i
As a result of this patent, which Steve Jobs alone thought up (like he did everything since the dawn of time), all particles found using this patented device will have a prefix of i, and anyone who utilizes these particles (even unknowingly) will be charged a nominal (read outrageous) fee for their use.
Apple, as we have come to know, invented everything
Though in recent days, in patent appeals, things finally suggest common sense is prevailing :)
The government takes a slice off every dollar that MOVES. And if it moves a lot and quickly, the revenues are high. If it doesn't move, then they make nothing.
And that rich 1% are hoarding the wealth.
The bottom 20% are the best ones to give the wealth to because they're numerous, have to spend all the money, or very nearly so, and the government gets a slice out of every twinkie sold.
But for the top 1%, money isn't about what you can purchase, it's about the leverage that gives you in a capitalist society where money talks and the richest person talks loudest. So they don't spend that money, they hoard it (or only use it to ammass more wealth to hoard, reducing the money flowing even more) and little is made from it.
If the rich paid taxes, that money would go to the bottom 20% mostly (they do the actual work) and that money would then be taxed as it is spent. And that would go to the bottom 40% (the employers would take a bonus), and that will get somewhat taxed. And the money the 40% spend will go to the botton 60% (the executives would buy luxury items whose investors are wealthier) and that taxed a little less.
You don't get merely 100% of the tax back, you get 500% of the tax back because to filter back up to the 1%, if they are paying taxes, it gets spent a dozen times.
There's no need for the binding to be the same to make inertial mass and gravitational mass equivalent.
Why does the attractiveness to Higgs make gravity pull as hard as it does? Yours is no different from the antropic principle that genuine scientists have considered and discarded and decided to make extremely clever devices to see if gravitational mass and inertial mass are *precisely* 1:1. If it were definitional, they would not have bothered.
Because two different mechanisms work on making inertia make it hard to accelerate and gravitons/spacewarp bend to make it accelerate are completely separate mechanism and there's no reason to suppose they should equate.
If they don't precisely equate, then we may just have a fluke of nature (maybe by only universes with these figures CLOSE to 1:1 is the only way to make a universe that will last long enough to be noticed as existing, much like the only way planets can orbit is if we have three and only three accessible space dimensions). If they do precisely equate, then there must be an Ur-mechanism that drives both and we only see the effects as separate mechanisms because we're looking at them differently (in the same way as the wave/particle duality depends on whether our experiment is trying to answer a particle-like question or a wave-like question, whereas in fact, the thing is neither, it is something else that has effects of both).
Rather it is the religious who want to believe in a timeless being outside time and space and really complex, but able to spontaneously exist because it does, m'kay? who do so so they can make strawmen.
Before the big bang has no meaning. It is as useful a question as "what's the difference between a duck's legs?" except in that case we acknowledge that this is a joke question and relies on the cognitive error that often lends itself to humour responses.
Before time began, there was no time, therefore no definition of "before". Science knows this. But talking to people who aren't scientists, they'll talk about *after* the big bang and about "nothing" "before" the big bang existed. Because they want words they can understand.
Extinction of pigs and buffalo if these dang scientists keep colliding them at high speed.
To get FTL you'd need to create something with imaginary mass, not negative.
And at zero imaginary mass, you have infinite velocity, at infinite imaginary mass, you have the same option as zero real mass: lightspeed or nothing. And between the two, the more massive you are, the slower you go for the same kinetic energy.
I'll write a GUI in visual basic to plot the occurrences over time of misuse of Higgs boson technobabble-based in popular media.
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
I envision a time where we can move furniture by setting up a force field around it and giving it a nudge. Also, cars would float on air like in Star Wars. If you could change the way something has or doesn't have mass you could use this to advantage in windmills and turbines. The cost of going into outer space would be much less. Airplanes would be less costly to ride. Come on change!
Why does the attractiveness to Higgs make gravity pull as hard as it does?
Because that attractiveness which grants intrinsic mass via the Higgs Effect is a form of energy, the amount of which is directly proportional to the granted intrinsic mass. The amount that space is warped is proportional to the energy in the system.
Ergo, however much intrinsic mass the Higgs Effect grants it also creates a proportional amount of gravity.
That's it. Let me know where I lost you.
Yours is no different from the antropic principle that genuine scientists have considered and discarded and decided to make extremely clever devices to see if gravitational mass and inertial mass are *precisely* 1:1. If it were definitional, they would not have bothered.
The equivalence principle is technically a postulate of General Relativity, not a definition. But either way -- only in mathematics and the minds of /.ers on the losing side of an argument do "by assumption" or "by definition" mean there is no reason to question the claimed fact any further.
Of course "geuine scientists" investigate whether the assumptions -- and consequences -- of General Relativity are true. And they know that finding that inertial and gravitational masses are different would mean knocking out one of the fundamental assumptions of GR -- that in a GR universe, the fact that the Higgs mechanisms along with any other energetic mechanism creates a proportional amount of gravity is not a mystery at all, it falls from the postulates. No need for the Anthropic Principle at all.
If they don't precisely equate, then we may just have a fluke of nature (maybe by only universes with these figures CLOSE to 1:1 is the only way to make a universe that will last long enough to be noticed as existing, much like the only way planets can orbit is if we have three and only three accessible space dimensions)
Now who's appealing to the Anthropic Principle? Not that this is bad. Contrary to what you said, the Anthropic Principle hasn't been discarded per se, it's just considered an unsatisfying answer if any other explanations can be found. It just makes a useful fall-back for things like the Fine Tuning problem. Meanwhile people search for a deeper answer than "because otherwise we wouldn't be here".
If they do precisely equate, then there must be an Ur-mechanism that drives both and we only see the effects as separate mechanisms because we're looking at them differently
Not true in a Relativistic universe. Gravity is a separate mechanism from other fields, but arises as a result of the energy in those fields. Gravitational theory itself is sufficient to explain why something like the Higgs Effect would always produce exactly the correct amount of gravity.
Of course that theory could be wrong, which is why scientists continue to poke at it. But within the framework of that theory, it is no mystery at all.
By the way, you seem to be confused about something, and maybe this will help: "Intrinsic" and "inertial" mass aren't the same thing. The Higgs field does not impart "inertial" mass, it imparts "intrinsic" mass. Intrinsic mass is the mass/energy an object has when it is not moving.
The inertial mass also scales with the total energy in the system, of which Higgs energy/intrinsic mass is just one component. If this wasn't so, then inertial and gravitational mass would diverge in a measureable way.
The enemies of Democracy are
I'm betting that someone will say it is the theoretical breakthrough we need in order to get create strong AI within ten years.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
A lot of out-of-work theoretical physicists of the standard model and a corresponding increase in the numbers of grocery baggers and taxi drivers. Also, expect to hear the beginning of arguments for a larger, more expensive particle accelerator to find the "we-just-made-it-up" boson.
E Proelio Veritas.
Joni Mitchell kinda sorted this all out a while ago:
We are stardust.
Billion year old carbon.
We are golden..
Caught in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.
this would allow us to disassemble and reassemble ourselves as in "Beam Me Up Scotty!
My name is David Leon Emery. I've always wondered how things like the pyramids were build and with the likes of people such as Ed Leedskalnin and Nicola Tesla, Rodin and others, I'm beginning to think the Higgs is one part of this two sided balancing act (more on this) and it's manipulation by electromagnectic force is do to it's mod9 (1-9, Qualitative Maths) composure. Tesla was obsessed with the #3. Davince understood 3's rotational balance and vortex math shows the driving force of ratios splitting and generating flawlessly. The key to understanding the Higgs Boson is in understanding the electromagnetic ratios and geometry in which the particle rotates and by applying force through splitting geometrical ratio(s), such as the visible propelling and heavily waited function of nine's rotationary cycle, we could unlock a Higgs boson and it's ease I think could be as relative as a tuning fork(given the right equipment) and I believe, yes, weightlessness and propulsion would be available for use and also interstellar travel. And as i see it even spiritual growth takes on a similar form of growth. Watch MIT's TEDtalk presentation on size of the universe. http://www.ted.com/talks/george_smoot_on_the_design_of_the_universe.html If this is the universe. It's beginning to look like everything else under the sun.
All this is presuming that the mass field can be manipulated in a fashion similar to the EM band. A big assumption. Reduced inertia: A safety field for vehicles. It's not the fall that kills, it's the impact. If you impact with the mass of a snowflake, you're probably not going to plow as deep a hole. Localized lowered/raised gravity. Faster vehicles (of all types again) that use less energy to get to speed. Inertialess or lowered inertia drives. If you can diddle with the direction/polarity, you might have a space drive to explore the Solar System a lot faster and more cheaply. And probably a MUCH better payload to fuel ratio. Fly me to the Moon! And possibly a drive that uses electricity directly like an ion drive would be a lot more energetic. "Gravity Polarizers" a la Baron Harkonnen. Also a big aid in construction, both terrestrial and for something like the Beanstalk/Space Elevator to synchronous orbit. And drives for the same. Though I'm not sure I'd want to live in a building that was held up and together by the thing. Power failure could be...your downfall. Someone who knows physics better than I can probably suggest hundreds of places that being able to make the inertial constant a variable would be interesting and practical. And then there's Superman: http://www.qwantz.com/fanart/superman.pdf
I hear that someone is working on an aluminum brief case that carries itself. It is going to be called the Zero Higgs Haliburton.
We will reduce an object's mass to such tiny units, that Mass Effect technology will be born, and we will be able to travel at speeds close to speed of light in a vacuum (space). This however, will not happen until the next 100 years or so.
Remember, there is nothing faster than C (Lightspeed) in the universe... As of yet discovered ;-)
Good one...
under some dark matter behind a gravity wave. Most lilkely it will be under a piece of paper on which is written 1+1=3.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
The hype around discovery of new particles is proportional to the amount of money spent on the discovery
Correct me if I'm wrong... but there seems to be something even more significant coming from this: the Higgs discovery confirms the Standard Model's claim that electrons, quarks etc. of which stuff is made are point particles that have zero volume. Not just infinitely small, not just less than Planck's length, but zero. They get their mass "charge" from the Higgs field, but they are not tiny balls of solid matter, they are points designated in space. So the total sum volume of all the fundamental particles that make the Sun, this planet, each one of us, is exactly zero.
So it follows there is nothing solid, nothing material underneath this reality. There is only an illusion of solidity coming from the electromagnetic/nuclear interaction of those points in space. But the whole world is like a dream, empty of any substance.
Am I missing something? One sort of check is that in light of this the Big Bang makes sense, you can certainly fit all of the universe in a zero-sized point when everything that makes it is no larger than a zero-sized point.
If CERN needs a new Oracle DBA, im available for hire :) Can you imagine the amount of money they're going to be pumping into CERN now when they made the discovery? If you thought they had a huge grant before, then that'll probably pale in comparison to the coming years.
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
The pressure of a ball of hot gas (like the sun) is a significant part of gravity because each atom and electron wizzing around and banging into things inside of it, has an energy component which strengthens the gravitational field (this is expecially true in very hot areas, like stars, where particles are moving very fast).
The energy comes from the kinetic energy, or the momentum. The kinetic energy equation is e =.5mv^2 (does that equation remind you of anything?).
Now, while a colder chunk of matter might have less kinetic energy. The MASS energy (e=mc^2), is is still pretty damn huge, and more then enough to have normal gravitational effects. In addition, even if a particle achieves a negative velocity, by moving slower than the expansion rate of the universe, it probably STILL won't have any negative kinetic energy. Why? Kinetic energy equals half the mass, times THE SQUARE of the velocity. The square of any number -- negative or positive -- is always a positive number.