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Growing Consensus: The Higgs Boson Exists
It's a long, slow road from tentative discovery, to various forms of peer review, to wide acceptance, never mind theory and experimental design, but recent years' work to pin down the Higgs Boson seem to be bearing fruit in the form of cautious announcements. FBeans writes with excerpts from both the New York Times ("Physicists announced Thursday they believe they have discovered the subatomic particle predicted nearly a half-century ago, which will go a long way toward explaining what gives electrons and all matter in the universe size and shape.") and from The Independent ("Cern says that confirming what type of boson the particle is could take years and that the scientists would need to return to the Large Hadron Collider — the world's largest 'atom smasher' — to carry out further tests. This will measure at what rate the particle decays and compare it with the results of predictions, as theorised by Edinburgh professor Peter Higgs 50 years ago.")
What is this Higgs Bosun?
Thank's for all your hard work, editor's.
You know we're going to see this headline:
"Scientists prove that God exists."
Scary.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Bigg Bosoms
I'm not quite sure what that question is. I think the answer you may be looking for is: The Scientific Method!
Dear Lord... the creature's power comes from electricity | radiation | tachyons | nanobots | god particles!
crazy dynamite monkey
It is being replicated at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Or would that be putting Descartes before the force?
It's just short for Goddamn particle, because it was so hard to find..
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
http://xkcd.com/154/
Consensus is very much part of the scientific method as it is actually practiced, even if not in an over-simplified theory of it. In practice, the people forming the consensus are smart, rational folks who rely on the "mathematical property of repeated observations" as much as possible. However, even with a few experiments reporting the same number --- how well do folks trust that there were not common systematic errors impacting all of them (it has certainly happened before)? That the results are not misinterpreted due to mistakes in the calculations, or missed effects? Forming a consensus within the scientific community that the reported numbers are *trustworthy* is a critical part of the actual existing scientific process: it's called peer review, and catches a lot of honest mistakes that a "just trust the numbers; don't bring your human experience/intuition/skepticism into it" approach would not.
"generally accepted scientific fact" = consensus --- otherwise, what's the "generally accepted" part? There is no stronger scientific definition of "fact" that transcends a general consensus based on a multitude of apparently properly done confirming experiments.
The energy of the tevatron collider at Fermilab is much lower than at CERN, making it very difficult if not impossible to observe the Higgs or measure its properties there. The collider has been shut down for more than a year anyhow as they transition to other physics experiments. http://www.fnal.gov/pub/tevatron/
That is one of the reasons that the LHC has multiple detectors built by competing teams.
... physicists celebrate mass.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
I did not really see that number stated in the various articles. I read that the US Tevatron saw a 'hint" of Higgs with three possible events.
The other thing I read in Physics Today is there are six classes and over thirty ways the Higgs can decay. Some ways are easier to see with current detectors than others. The July 4 announccment was based on at least two decay modes. The more modes the more confidence.
...no, no -- that's not how it's going to be "picked up".
Let's take a look:
NBC News: Particle confirmed as Higgs boson
Associated Press: Physicists say they have found a Higgs boson
Reuters: Strong signs Higgs boson has been found: CERN
Wall Street Journal: New Data Boosts Case for Higgs Boson Find
FOX News: Physicists say they have found long-sought Higgs boson
Washington Post: A closer look at the Higgs boson particle that helps explain what gives matter size and shape
Chicago Tribune: Strong signs Higgs boson has been found: CERN
Sky News: Higgs Boson: Experts Sure Of 'God Particle'
New York Daily News: Physicists say they have discovered crucial subatomic particle known as Higgs boson
Boston Globe: Physicists say they have found a Higgs boson
BBC (UK): LHC cements Higgs boson identification
BusinessWeek: Case for Higgs Boson Strengthened by New CERN Analysis
The Daily Mail (UK): Scientists say they HAVE found the 'God particle' - but admit they still aren't sure what type of Higgs boson it is
The Independent (UK): Have they found the Higgs boson at last? Cern physicists say they're confident of 'God particle' breakthrough
Telegraph (UK): Higgs boson: scientists confident they have discovered the 'God particle'
News Limited (AU): Higgs boson, the God particle, discovered by CERN
US News and World Report: Physicists Observe Higgs Boson, the Elusive 'God Particle'
None of these articles make any links to "God" other than a few -- mostly UK, not US -- sources referring to it as the so-called "God particle", but even those explain exactly what this particle is theorized to be, not anything supernatural, "proving God exists", or having anything whatever to do with God.
Flying cars, invisibility, peace in the Middle East, FTL travel, consensus on the original lyrics to "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"?
At first I thought you couldn't be serious, then I dove into the information river for a swim. . Amazing, things you learn and beliefs shattered. "In the Garden of Eden"? Really? So I took it one step further and wanted to see a video to help remember the song. I found this one and had a disconnected moment thinking "My God those guys were old even back then". I quickly understood it was just a bunch of old guys reliving their glory. Please, old rockers, don't go on tour any more, you don't live up to the memories and it reminds me (and I guess others) just how old we are.
I'm going with Occam's Razor, they came up with In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida without the drunkenness; that would have been more like "in the gerdom ah girdon um gordon oh fuck, Eden". Still a great song to code by.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
So we couldn't lower the mass of a spaceship and accelerate it past light speed?
The Higgs (named after Peter Higgs, not Higg, as your use of the possessive apostrophe would suggest) boson gives fermions and several bosons (including itself) their intrinsic mass. Even when discussing relativity, "mass" usually refers to the intrinsic Newtonian-style mass that you mean when you say "rest mass." "Relativistic mass" means the total energy of a system divided by c^2, which includes the intrinsic mass.
I also doubt the OP is referring to relativistic mass because he's talking about reducing mass. It's easy to reduce relativistic mass.
theories can be useful. the standard model is useful for predicting the outcome of experiments. these Higgs boson results are a part of that. there are actually several theories about the Higg boson's properties (such as spin and decay rate & products), and more research will tell which of those models are useful. science is about useful models, you want Truth go next door to Philosophy department.
the new sub-atomic particle announced last summer bears one of the classic signatures of the proposed Higgs boson – it does not spin or rotate like all other known sub-atomic particles.
The fact that this new particle is “spin zero”, combined with further evidence based on the way it decays into other known sub-atomic particles, is a convincing indication that it is indeed the Higgs boson,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/have-they-found-the-higgs-boson-at-last-cern-physicists-say-theyre-confident-of-breakthrough-8534012.html
All these government scientists know they can keep getting grant money toeing the standard modelist line.
And besides, even if the Higgs Field does exist, it doesn't prove the theory is correct, so why should we be spending millions of dollars to change textbooks when there is nothing we can do with this knowledge anyway.
When the electron was discovered, it could have also, and naively been considered useless. However here we are commenting on the latest discovery of science, utilising that very knowledge. The point is, you don't know what will be usefull and what won't be useful. Besides it's fun, interesting and nearly always useful to learn how the universe works. The internet was made at CERN, you could say as a result of this research. So.....
The theory behind the Higgs mechanism motivated the search for the Higgs particle in the first place. It's well worked out. Check Wikipedia.
Practical answer: if you put enough energy in a small enough space you'll get all kinds of particles. Some of those will be Higgs'.
Sciency answer: the Higgs particle is just a manifestation of a perturbation in the Higgs field, just like every other fundamental particle is a perturbation in it's own quantum field in modern quantum field theory. To produce a Higgs you pump enough energy into the Higgs field in a particular location.
If at will you mean by smashing other particles together at high speed and occasionally getting a Higgs out, yes. If you mean specifically producing a Higgs on command, no.
No. The Higgs field doesn't have anything to do with gravity: http://profmattstrassler.com/2012/10/15/why-the-higgs-and-gravity-are-unrelated/
well, there are "fermions", after Fermi, and "bosons", after Bose, but those are the two classes of particles. There are "gluons", ending in -on, but from English "glue". Then there are the W and Z bosons, which are just letters, and the quarks...
The Higgs field is part of the a particular formulation of quantum field theory that is often called the Standard Model. There are lots of other quantum field theories, and other theories that are not field theories, not quantum theories, or both, that may or may not have any relation to reality.
The existence of a Higgs particle in a particular energy range, detectable by such and such means, is a hypothesis, motivated by theory called the Standard Model, other more speculative theories which may one day be incorporated into the standard model, and practicality (most of the theorized Higgs particles are simply out of reach of our collider building capabilities).
Making the particular observations specified by the hypothesis supports that hypothesis, and also the theory that originated the hypothesis. These observations have already been replicated, by the way. Making other observations specified by the hypothesis will further support it. Currently we have decent evidence for a particle, but not so much evidence about whether it has the specific properties required to be the Higgs particle predicted by the theory.
Theories are not accepted hypotheses! Particularly not in physics. Unfortunately this erroneous definition seems to have made it into several dictionaries. Of course, people who write dictionaries are almost never scientists.
It links to an AP story with the headline "Physicists say they have found a Higgs boson", which says...
If you've going to posit a "system aboard the ship that increases the energy density of the higgs field in your local vicinity," you might as well posit that you have a magic box that locally increases the value of c. Within our current scientific understanding, the properties of fundamental fields, like the value of c and the gravitational/inertial mass equivalence, are simply facts of the universe that can't be manipulated with some snazzy device. By starting your though experiment with a device that already lies outside scientific understanding, it's no wonder that you can reach conclusions (faster-than-c travel) also outside the same framework. Perhaps this is possible in some future new scientific framework (or perhaps not), but it's idle sci-fi speculation until such a system is rigorously developed.
The Higgs is merely a liberal myth to get funding from big government by Photoshoping particle path photos using smelly hippie open-source software to claim they almost detected it.
Next those commie atheist Sharia liberal hippies will tell you that subatomic particles work the same way inside poor people that they do inside wealthy job creators!
Equality of physics? What's next, free sunshine?
And those damned neutrinos CANNOT go through us Republicans. We have guns! Neutrinos only pass through surrendering cowards!
Table-ized A.I.
The fundamental difference between belief in science and belief in religion:
Lets say somehow the world's scientific knowledge was lost; completely wiped off the face of the world. After the inevitable chaos, death, and destruction from the lack of food, water, medical care, power generation, etc, etc, the world would get going on science again eventually. And after a few thousand years, the body of knowledge would be fundamentally the same as what it is now. There will, doubtless, be areas that are well advanced compared to what we know now, there will also be areas that are seriously degraded compared to what we have now. But the same fundamental truths would be known.
Now lets say somehow the worlds religious knowledge was lost; completely wiped off the face of the world. You'd have a few weeks of peace as several groups forget just what it is that they've been fighting about all these centuries (or more likely, the people in power would simply find a new thing to fight about because once you've been fighting for centuries it isn't easy to stop). Then I suspect that you'd have a long period of turmoil as a few million cults spring up, combine, fight, schism, and reform. And at the end, you'll have a religious landscape that is fundamentally different from what exists today. How do I know that? Because different cultures around the world have fundementally different religious beliefs. Even if you gave everyone a copy of the Bible, in a century you'd have 100 different translations and 50 different sects and I know that because, again, history shows it to be true.
Every predomently atheist society has the same rules, even those rare cultures that have no concept of religion. You're trying to argue that religion and morality are the same thing, which they need not be. It's true to a certain extent, most religions codify those morals, but then again, so do most governments.
What? Those aren't common to even just the major world religions.
Required reading for internet skeptics
No, because most of the mass doesn't come from the Higgs field.
Specifically, most of the mass of ordinary matter comes from the nuclei of atoms. Those are composed of protons and neutrons, which are in turn composed of a mix of quarks, anti-quarks, and gluons, with 3 "extra" quarks. The Higgs field gives mass to the quarks and anti-quarks (including the extras) but most of the mass of the particle is due to the binding energy of the strong force interaction between the constituent parts. So reducing the strength with which the Higgs field acts wouldn't substantially reduce the mass of the spaceship.
Even if you could lower the mass you couldn't make it 0 or negative, so you'd end up taking infinite energy anyway.
Not a sentence!