Also, it has one of the smallest memory footprints (under 50 Mb) and you can turn it off (believe it or not, some AVs can't be turned off except by uninstalling).
Just adding my voice to this - I use MS because it doesn't do any of the annoying crap that other free AVs I've tried do. No sudden 100% CPU usage for 20 minutes, no pop-up adds. My only slight gripe is that it seems to do a brief scan on startup, which slows down your startup time (time taken from booting up until your HDD stops chewing), and I can't see a way to turn this off. But all AVs I've tried do the same thing.
The same thing applies to civil suits. You sue someone for $100,000 and you lose, then you have to pay that person $100K.
This has got to be one of the worst suggestions on the thread, and that's saying something. You accuse someone of rape, and they're found not guilty (even though they actually did do it)? So, you go to jail?
Help me to understand what entanglement really means. As it's explained above, I don't see how it's different than this scenario:
Take two playing cards, the king of hearts and the king of spades, and place them face down on a table. Mix them up until you don't know which is which. Have a friend pick one card without looking at it and drive away with it in his car. When he's gone 100 miles have him call you up. Tell him you will now perform magic and tell him what card he has. Look at the card that's remained with you. If it's the king of hearts, tell him he has the king of spades. If it's the king of spades, tell him he has the king of hearts.
OK, but imagine that you can also rotate your card by 90 degrees, and when you turn it over you get the jack of diamonds. If you tell your friend to rotate his card by 90 degrees before turning it over, then he must always find the jack of clubs.
Further, if you don't rotate your card (and you see the king of spades), but your friend does rotate his card by 90 degrees. What happens then? The theory predicts that there's a 50% chance he sees the king of spades, and 50% he sees the king of hearts.
Now, try to make cards that works that way. Once you're done, mail it to the Nobel Prize committee:)
Prior to measurement by whom or what? - You, me, some physical process somewhere that no-one is aware of? Surely it's just a status of lack of knowledge - not an actual physical status.
This has been troubling philosophers for the last 100 years or so, but the majority viewpoint now is that when something "measures" a system, what's happening is that the measurer interacts with the system, and they become entangled together. The result of this entanglement turns out to be that "me-seeing-down + it-being-down" and "me-seeing-up + it-being-up" dominate the possible outcomes.
Look up 'interpretation of quantum mechanics' on wikipedia for much more detailed info
The 'lack of knowledge' theory is fairly easily debunked (see Bell inequailities). There's no way you can explain the results of the experiment in terms of there being a concrete physical status that we just don't know about yet.
By definition it can't be tested experimentally. You don't know until you measure, and the only way to know is therefore to measure. So it's not science as it can't be tested.
You have it backwards. Science is about predicting the results of measurements. If a theory correctly predicts the results of experiments then we consider the theory to be correct. The meaning of words like "truth", "knowledge" and "reality" in this context is best left to the philosophers.
The whole point about the weirdness of quantum entanglement is that the quanta are NOT in a state where one is up and one is down prior to the measurement. Only when you make the measurement does this happen. Prior to the measurement, quantum mechanics says that they are both in a state that is BOTH up and down at the same time
It's even cooler than that. If you measure the spin of one of the particles in *any direction* -- say, northwest, then the other one will be found to be spinning the opposite way , southeast in this example.
(In the language of linear algebra, the space of possible spin states is a two-dimensional complex vector space. Opposite directions are considered orthogonal, and since any pair of two orthogonal unit vectors forms a basis that spans a two-dimensional space; the state can be represented in any of these bases).
Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.
Licensees may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work.
There is not any other restriction on commercial use of the work, or making derivative works based on it.
I don't believe newborn babies are any different than a fetus: they're blank and have no individuality, and a one-day-old is pretty worthless and not really a human being but just a collection of cells.
Pretty clear that you've never had a one-day-old baby of your own. This debate should be restricted to people who have had kids, IMHO.
Drive with the dash protecting sun-screen still on the dash? NOT YOUR FAULT! The maker of the sun-screen forgot to put a warning label on, telling you not to be an idiot! Nevermind that it would be completely impossible to see through an OPAQUE device, INTENDED to block light! No, you're an AMERICAN, you are special, and if that company didnt give you a written warning, YOU DESERVE MILLIONS!
Basically I am in my mid 20s. I am physically attractive and take good care of myself. Women over 40 think I'm a great guy and really like who I am, universally. Unfortunately I want a woman more my age. Can't say I want to be with a retiree when I turn 40 ya know? Women my age want a guy who's "got game" which is a weird way of saying a guy who's good at bullshitting and lying to them and using them for his own ends. They seem to like shallow, flashy guys who just want to fuck them, like it's a challenge to them to "domesticate" such a guy.
There's something you're not telling us (perhaps because you don't realize yourself). Maybe you're boring or ugly. (Women do lower their standards in those departments as they get older).
Maybe you're creepy around girls your own age, but you relax and act yourself around women you aren't interested in.
The other kind is men who think they're like group 1 above, but they're not, they're introverted losers (note: I'm not saying all introverts are losers, just these men), and they can't read womens' body language at all, don't know what they can get away with and what's over the line (group 1 above knows the difference), so they make pathetic attempts at emulating group #1, but fail miserably. These men are pathetic, lonely, and despicable creatures.
Really good post. Christian Gray from "that book" is a type 1.
The trouble is that the people in group 2 don't actually realize that they are in group 2. They know they're lonely, but just think their bad luck with women is because they're not good looking enough or not rich enough. They really do think that if they like a girl but she seems to have been ignoring them so far, then the thing to do is to follow her around the party and try to engineer a situation where they end up close together and then maybe next time she will say hi. If she still doesn't say hi, then maybe she hasn't noticed, so touch her arm to make a warm fuzzy intimate situation and so on.
Walling was probably shocked that his behaviour was considered "sexual harrassment" and didn't realize he'd done anything wrong. The group 2 people didn't set out to be pathetic losers, they just grew up that way for whatever reason. If they realized what they were doing wrong, they'd have stopped doing it.
Calling them names and abusing them on internet forums just means they'll be confused at the negativity, feel even more lonely, and then try even harder to chase a nice girl around at the next party they go to.
Let's just be clear, I'm not defending what the group 2 people do in any way; it is completely wrong. But if our goal is to turn group 2 people into normal functioning members of society, then they need to see the error of their ways explained in terms they can understand.
Threads like this are actually really important; as lots of group 2 people will have followed this thread, and not only will they see the massive negative reaction to Walling's behaviour (therefore triggering them to re-evaluate their norms), they also get to read posts like the one I'm responding to that explain things from the girl's point of view.
I would be furious if I was a Kiwi... Only advice I can really come up with is pretty straightforward: VOTE THEM OUT!.
There's not really a viable alternative. I voted for the current government more out of a desire to vote out the previous lot, because of social engineering policies such as banning you from smacking your kid when he's naughty. They need to stick to running the country , not micromanaging people's lives.
Voting for a minor party that champions an issue you care about, might get you action on that issue but then you are stuck with whichever major party they befriend for all the other issues.
The current government seems to be selling the country off to corporate interests though, so we're stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Something tells me that energy conservation still holds...
I don't think there's any suggestion that energy conservation is being violated. TFA is extremegly vague, but as far as I can tell, the suggestion is that there is some entropy in entanglement. Can anyone find a more detailed writeup?
No information is gained, for the same reason that separating entangled particles by a great distance and then measuring one doesn't result in information traveling faster than the speed of light.
This is like saying putting a red ball in one bag and putting a blue ball in an identical bag, then shuffling the bags around, then looking in one bag gives you free information about the other bag. It doesn't.
Not quite. The latter scenario is affectionately called "Bertlmann's socks"; once you separate the bag, it's true that one has the red ball and one has the blue ball but we don't know which until we look.
However, with a pair of entangled particles of spin state (up + down) for example, it's not the case that one is up and one is down. If you measure one particle in the "east" direction and find that it is pointing east, then the other one will be found to be pointing "west". It's been proven (Bell's inequalities etc.) that there is no possible "hidden state" that would account for the fact that the two measurements can be taken in arbitrary directions and still correlate.
doesn't seem to match the rest of the article. TFA talks about how they can extract more usable energy from the system using entanglement, but it doesn't violate any physical laws. The only violation is in the title!
Bit surprised to see two awards go to researchers in cosmic inflation, a speculative theory with no evidence for it. (I guess string theory is in the same basket though!)
Trying to make a point of that despite the disclaimer makes you sound like an asshole
I'll admit that I used a sensational title, hoping to avoid my post never getting read!
Secondly, the fact that the inertial mass is the same as gravitational mass is interesting. Gravitational mass result in curvature on space-time, inertial mass is the result of the ripples in the Higgs field. Their associativity is related to the quantum-mechanics and gravity connection,
Inertial mass (of quarks, Zs, Ws, electrons, muons, and taus) is the result of them interacting with the Higgs field even when there were no ripples present in it. The Higgs field is always on, you could almost think of it as one giant particle that has unlimited energy and has 100% chance to be found at any point in space.
The idea of 'curvature of space-time' comes from general relativity, which basically says that there is not a quantity 'gravitational mass' which differs from other types of mass. GR says that all stress and energy (including inertial mass) causes space-time curvature. The actual equation of GR is: curvature-tensor = stress-energy-tensor * constant. You're putting the cart before the horse. It doesn't need a theory of quantum gravity to 'explain' it, although such a theory certainly would be interesting.
It's my understanding that this boson was not discovered before LHC because it was too massive to produce in a lesser accelerator; however, the top quark was produced at Fermilab some years ago, and it has a larger mass (Higgs @ 125GeV, top quark @ ~171GeV). Does anyone understand why this is? I know I am missing something here...
The top quark is easy to detect, as its most common decay channel is fairly distinctive. But 99.999% of the Higgs decays are into things that are indistinguishable from other by-products of the collisions that generated the Higgs boson in the first place. Fermilab and the other colliders definitely would have generated many Higgs bosons, however they just couldn't amass the volume of data required to pick the Higgs decays out of the background. The LHC wins here not because of its energy, but because of its sustained luminosity.
I understand that the Higgs is responsible for giving mass to all the other particles, then it must be *everywhere*. Why is it so difficult to detect? Why does it take such a staggeringly powerful supercollider to find what ought to be as common as the electron or proton?
A poster asked the above questions, which G.O.'s reply did not actually address. The Higgs field is everywhere, and gives mass to many (not all) of the other particles. In a sense, we detected it long ago when we noticed that things have mass. The Higgs boson doesn't give mass to anything.
Why is the Higgs boson not as common as electrons or protons? A particle is the smallest possible ripple in a field. It so happens that the electron field has its smallest possible ripple of mass 0.511 MeV, but the Higgs field has its smallest possible ripple of mass ~125300 MeV , about a quarter of a million times more energetic. If the collision only produces 100 MeV of energy, for example, there's not much chance it'll be able to make a Higgs boson, but it could make a lot of electrons.
Why is the Higgs boson so hard to detect? It has a short lifetime (by human standards) and quickly dissipates into other particles (much like how a vibrating guitar string dissipates into vibrations in adjacent fields such as the guitar body, the surrounding air, the guitar head, your hand, etc.). However, the vast majority of its decay products are the same things that are produced in the collisions that we used to create the Higgs boson in the first place; for example if we detect a pair of bottom quarks, we don't know whether they came directly out of the proton-proton collision, or whether that collision produced a Higgs boson that then decayed into a pair of bottom quarks.
The main way that we're detecting the Higgs boson is by it decaying to two photons. Of course, photons come directly out of the collisions too, but they have a smooth frequency (energy) distribution. But the Higgs decay photons always will add up to the mass of the Higgs boson. So we plot the photon output of the collisions against their frequency (energy), and look for a bump.
It happens that the energy E of the collision can "materialize" into particles, provided that E>=mc^2, where m is the sum of all the particles produced in the collision.
Virtual particles don't follow this rule (a virtual particle is really a disturbance in the field that isn't the right sort to become a self-propagating ripple, so it dissipates straight away. This can have any amount of energy). For example, one of the Higgs decay channels (or production channels) is H -> ZZ. But Z bosons have a mass of 91 GeV , so two Z bosons weigh nearly 50% more than the Higgs boson. So, at least one of the Z's must be virtual; careful writers will call the process H -> ZZ* to indicate this. What actually happens here is that the energy of the Higgs boson dissipates into the Z field, and from there it quickly dissipates again into other fields. This does happen despite the fact that it didn't create two real bosons in the Z field on its way.
Actually, from the mathematical point of view, there is no such a distinction between particles and fields. Both are represented in the same way. In fact, in quantum mechanics, there are neither particles, nor fields, as we imagine them. The 'objects' behave like fields in certain conditions and like particles in different conditions.
This is like saying there's no distinction between oceans and tsunamis. But there is; the tsunami is a self-propagating ripple in the ocean. Just as a particle is a self-propagating ripple in a field. There's only one field (of each type) and it's everywhere, and it's normally off unless there's a ripple passing through. (The Higgs field is unique in that it's always on).
in our Universe, sometimes particles behave like fields.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, it has one of the smallest memory footprints (under 50 Mb) and you can turn it off (believe it or not, some AVs can't be turned off except by uninstalling).
Just adding my voice to this - I use MS because it doesn't do any of the annoying crap that other free AVs I've tried do. No sudden 100% CPU usage for 20 minutes, no pop-up adds. My only slight gripe is that it seems to do a brief scan on startup, which slows down your startup time (time taken from booting up until your HDD stops chewing), and I can't see a way to turn this off. But all AVs I've tried do the same thing.
If not everybody picked up the mutation then how can we all survive on veges alone today?
The same thing applies to civil suits. You sue someone for $100,000 and you lose, then you have to pay that person $100K.
This has got to be one of the worst suggestions on the thread, and that's saying something. You accuse someone of rape, and they're found not guilty (even though they actually did do it)? So, you go to jail?
Heh, I munged up my own example. He has 50% chance of seeing jack of clubs and 50% of seeing jack of diamonds.
Help me to understand what entanglement really means. As it's explained above, I don't see how it's different than this scenario:
Take two playing cards, the king of hearts and the king of spades, and place them face down on a table. Mix them up until you don't know which is which. Have a friend pick one card without looking at it and drive away with it in his car. When he's gone 100 miles have him call you up. Tell him you will now perform magic and tell him what card he has. Look at the card that's remained with you. If it's the king of hearts, tell him he has the king of spades. If it's the king of spades, tell him he has the king of hearts.
OK, but imagine that you can also rotate your card by 90 degrees, and when you turn it over you get the jack of diamonds. If you tell your friend to rotate his card by 90 degrees before turning it over, then he must always find the jack of clubs.
Further, if you don't rotate your card (and you see the king of spades), but your friend does rotate his card by 90 degrees. What happens then? The theory predicts that there's a 50% chance he sees the king of spades, and 50% he sees the king of hearts.
Now, try to make cards that works that way. Once you're done, mail it to the Nobel Prize committee :)
Prior to measurement by whom or what? - You, me, some physical process somewhere that no-one is aware of? Surely it's just a status of lack of knowledge - not an actual physical status.
This has been troubling philosophers for the last 100 years or so, but the majority viewpoint now is that when something "measures" a system, what's happening is that the measurer interacts with the system, and they become entangled together. The result of this entanglement turns out to be that "me-seeing-down + it-being-down" and "me-seeing-up + it-being-up" dominate the possible outcomes.
Look up 'interpretation of quantum mechanics' on wikipedia for much more detailed info
The 'lack of knowledge' theory is fairly easily debunked (see Bell inequailities). There's no way you can explain the results of the experiment in terms of there being a concrete physical status that we just don't know about yet.
By definition it can't be tested experimentally. You don't know until you measure, and the only way to know is therefore to measure. So it's not science as it can't be tested.
You have it backwards. Science is about predicting the results of measurements. If a theory correctly predicts the results of experiments then we consider the theory to be correct. The meaning of words like "truth", "knowledge" and "reality" in this context is best left to the philosophers.
The whole point about the weirdness of quantum entanglement is that the quanta are NOT in a state where one is up and one is down prior to the measurement. Only when you make the measurement does this happen. Prior to the measurement, quantum mechanics says that they are both in a state that is BOTH up and down at the same time
It's even cooler than that. If you measure the spin of one of the particles in *any direction* -- say, northwest, then the other one will be found to be spinning the opposite way , southeast in this example.
(In the language of linear algebra, the space of possible spin states is a two-dimensional complex vector space. Opposite directions are considered orthogonal, and since any pair of two orthogonal unit vectors forms a basis that spans a two-dimensional space; the state can be represented in any of these bases).
"CC by-sa" means:
Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.
Licensees may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work.
There is not any other restriction on commercial use of the work, or making derivative works based on it.
(source: Wikipedia)
I don't believe newborn babies are any different than a fetus: they're blank and have no individuality, and a one-day-old is pretty worthless and not really a human being but just a collection of cells.
Pretty clear that you've never had a one-day-old baby of your own. This debate should be restricted to people who have had kids, IMHO.
Would also be nice to know how many libraries of congress per second the telescope will be able to send back to Earth
Drive with the dash protecting sun-screen still on the dash? NOT YOUR FAULT! The maker of the sun-screen forgot to put a warning label on, telling you not to be an idiot! Nevermind that it would be completely impossible to see through an OPAQUE device, INTENDED to block light! No, you're an AMERICAN, you are special, and if that company didnt give you a written warning, YOU DESERVE MILLIONS!
Is this a real case?
I know you guys aren't fond of the metric system , but does data have to
be measured in "libraries of Congress" ?
Having never been to said library, this doesn't make much of an impression on me. Any official conversion ratio?
Google claims 1 LoC = 235 TB.
Basically I am in my mid 20s. I am physically attractive and take good care of myself. Women over 40 think I'm a great guy and really like who I am, universally. Unfortunately I want a woman more my age. Can't say I want to be with a retiree when I turn 40 ya know? Women my age want a guy who's "got game" which is a weird way of saying a guy who's good at bullshitting and lying to them and using them for his own ends. They seem to like shallow, flashy guys who just want to fuck them, like it's a challenge to them to "domesticate" such a guy.
There's something you're not telling us (perhaps because you don't realize yourself). Maybe you're boring or ugly. (Women do lower their standards in those departments as they get older).
Maybe you're creepy around girls your own age, but you relax and act yourself around women you aren't interested in.
The other kind is men who think they're like group 1 above, but they're not, they're introverted losers (note: I'm not saying all introverts are losers, just these men), and they can't read womens' body language at all, don't know what they can get away with and what's over the line (group 1 above knows the difference), so they make pathetic attempts at emulating group #1, but fail miserably. These men are pathetic, lonely, and despicable creatures.
Really good post. Christian Gray from "that book" is a type 1.
The trouble is that the people in group 2 don't actually realize that they are in group 2. They know they're lonely, but just think their bad luck with women is because they're not good looking enough or not rich enough. They really do think that if they like a girl but she seems to have been ignoring them so far, then the thing to do is to follow her around the party and try to engineer a situation where they end up close together and then maybe next time she will say hi. If she still doesn't say hi, then maybe she hasn't noticed, so touch her arm to make a warm fuzzy intimate situation and so on.
Walling was probably shocked that his behaviour was considered "sexual harrassment" and didn't realize he'd done anything wrong. The group 2 people didn't set out to be pathetic losers, they just grew up that way for whatever reason. If they realized what they were doing wrong, they'd have stopped doing it.
Calling them names and abusing them on internet forums just means they'll be confused at the negativity, feel even more lonely, and then try even harder to chase a nice girl around at the next party they go to.
Let's just be clear, I'm not defending what the group 2 people do in any way; it is completely wrong. But if our goal is to turn group 2 people into normal functioning members of society, then they need to see the error of their ways explained in terms they can understand.
Threads like this are actually really important; as lots of group 2 people will have followed this thread, and not only will they see the massive negative reaction to Walling's behaviour (therefore triggering them to re-evaluate their norms), they also get to read posts like the one I'm responding to that explain things from the girl's point of view.
I would be furious if I was a Kiwi... Only advice I can really come up with is pretty straightforward: VOTE THEM OUT!.
There's not really a viable alternative. I voted for the current government more out of a desire to vote out the previous lot, because of social engineering policies such as banning you from smacking your kid when he's naughty. They need to stick to running the country , not micromanaging people's lives.
Voting for a minor party that champions an issue you care about, might get you action on that issue but then you are stuck with whichever major party they befriend for all the other issues.
The current government seems to be selling the country off to corporate interests though, so we're stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Also, both the results of the experiments that show Bell's inequality is violated, and the theorem itself, are being challenged.
Usenet post "LOAL BELL AND EINSTEIN WERE WRONG truthfully in the 24 dimensions of te quantum pie blaaa.." doesn't count
Something tells me that energy conservation still holds...
I don't think there's any suggestion that energy conservation is being violated. TFA is extremegly vague, but as far as I can tell, the suggestion is that there is some entropy in entanglement. Can anyone find a more detailed writeup?
No information is gained, for the same reason that separating entangled particles by a great distance and then measuring one doesn't result in information traveling faster than the speed of light.
This is like saying putting a red ball in one bag and putting a blue ball in an identical bag, then shuffling the bags around, then looking in one bag gives you free information about the other bag. It doesn't.
Not quite. The latter scenario is affectionately called "Bertlmann's socks"; once you separate the bag, it's true that one has the red ball and one has the blue ball but we don't know which until we look.
However, with a pair of entangled particles of spin state (up + down) for example, it's not the case that one is up and one is down. If you measure one particle in the "east" direction and find that it is pointing east, then the other one will be found to be pointing "west". It's been proven (Bell's inequalities etc.) that there is no possible "hidden state" that would account for the fact that the two measurements can be taken in arbitrary directions and still correlate.
doesn't seem to match the rest of the article. TFA talks about how they can extract more usable energy from the system using entanglement, but it doesn't violate any physical laws. The only violation is in the title!
Bit surprised to see two awards go to researchers in cosmic inflation, a speculative theory with no evidence for it. (I guess string theory is in the same basket though!)
Trying to make a point of that despite the disclaimer makes you sound like an asshole
I'll admit that I used a sensational title, hoping to avoid my post never getting read!
Secondly, the fact that the inertial mass is the same as gravitational mass is interesting. Gravitational mass result in curvature on space-time, inertial mass is the result of the ripples in the Higgs field. Their associativity is related to the quantum-mechanics and gravity connection,
Inertial mass (of quarks, Zs, Ws, electrons, muons, and taus) is the result of them interacting with the Higgs field even when there were no ripples present in it. The Higgs field is always on, you could almost think of it as one giant particle that has unlimited energy and has 100% chance to be found at any point in space.
The idea of 'curvature of space-time' comes from general relativity, which basically says that there is not a quantity 'gravitational mass' which differs from other types of mass. GR says that all stress and energy (including inertial mass) causes space-time curvature. The actual equation of GR is: curvature-tensor = stress-energy-tensor * constant. You're putting the cart before the horse. It doesn't need a theory of quantum gravity to 'explain' it, although such a theory certainly would be interesting.
It's my understanding that this boson was not discovered before LHC because it was too massive to produce in a lesser accelerator; however, the top quark was produced at Fermilab some years ago, and it has a larger mass (Higgs @ 125GeV, top quark @ ~171GeV). Does anyone understand why this is? I know I am missing something here...
The top quark is easy to detect, as its most common decay channel is fairly distinctive. But 99.999% of the Higgs decays are into things that are indistinguishable from other by-products of the collisions that generated the Higgs boson in the first place. Fermilab and the other colliders definitely would have generated many Higgs bosons, however they just couldn't amass the volume of data required to pick the Higgs decays out of the background. The LHC wins here not because of its energy, but because of its sustained luminosity.
In fact, Fermilab has published plots that do show small bumps at the Higgs boson mass - but in themselves, the statistical significance is not nearly enough to make a discovery.
I understand that the Higgs is responsible for giving mass to all the other particles, then it must be *everywhere*. Why is it so difficult to detect? Why does it take such a staggeringly powerful supercollider to find what ought to be as common as the electron or proton?
A poster asked the above questions, which G.O.'s reply did not actually address. The Higgs field is everywhere, and gives mass to many (not all) of the other particles. In a sense, we detected it long ago when we noticed that things have mass. The Higgs boson doesn't give mass to anything.
Why is the Higgs boson not as common as electrons or protons? A particle is the smallest possible ripple in a field. It so happens that the electron field has its smallest possible ripple of mass 0.511 MeV, but the Higgs field has its smallest possible ripple of mass ~125300 MeV , about a quarter of a million times more energetic. If the collision only produces 100 MeV of energy, for example, there's not much chance it'll be able to make a Higgs boson, but it could make a lot of electrons.
Why is the Higgs boson so hard to detect? It has a short lifetime (by human standards) and quickly dissipates into other particles (much like how a vibrating guitar string dissipates into vibrations in adjacent fields such as the guitar body, the surrounding air, the guitar head, your hand, etc.). However, the vast majority of its decay products are the same things that are produced in the collisions that we used to create the Higgs boson in the first place; for example if we detect a pair of bottom quarks, we don't know whether they came directly out of the proton-proton collision, or whether that collision produced a Higgs boson that then decayed into a pair of bottom quarks.
The main way that we're detecting the Higgs boson is by it decaying to two photons. Of course, photons come directly out of the collisions too, but they have a smooth frequency (energy) distribution. But the Higgs decay photons always will add up to the mass of the Higgs boson. So we plot the photon output of the collisions against their frequency (energy), and look for a bump.
It happens that the energy E of the collision can "materialize" into particles, provided that E>=mc^2, where m is the sum of all the particles produced in the collision.
Virtual particles don't follow this rule (a virtual particle is really a disturbance in the field that isn't the right sort to become a self-propagating ripple, so it dissipates straight away. This can have any amount of energy). For example, one of the Higgs decay channels (or production channels) is H -> ZZ. But Z bosons have a mass of 91 GeV , so two Z bosons weigh nearly 50% more than the Higgs boson. So, at least one of the Z's must be virtual; careful writers will call the process H -> ZZ* to indicate this. What actually happens here is that the energy of the Higgs boson dissipates into the Z field, and from there it quickly dissipates again into other fields. This does happen despite the fact that it didn't create two real bosons in the Z field on its way.
Actually, from the mathematical point of view, there is no such a distinction between particles and fields. Both are represented in the same way. In fact, in quantum mechanics, there are neither particles, nor fields, as we imagine them. The 'objects' behave like fields in certain conditions and like particles in different conditions.
This is like saying there's no distinction between oceans and tsunamis. But there is; the tsunami is a self-propagating ripple in the ocean. Just as a particle is a self-propagating ripple in a field. There's only one field (of each type) and it's everywhere, and it's normally off unless there's a ripple passing through. (The Higgs field is unique in that it's always on).
in our Universe, sometimes particles behave like fields.
That just doesn't make any sense. It's as if