holy_calamity writes "The Large Hadron Collider is in trouble again. It will start work sometime in spring 2008, not November this year as planned. The delay has been blamed on an 'accumulation of minor setbacks,' and comes on top of a 'design fault' that saw breakdown of magnets supplied by the competing Fermilab. Yesterday Slate nicely rounded up increasingly loud rumors among physicists that Fermilab may already have seen the Higgs particle, the 'holy grail of particle physics' the LHC was build to find."
They are undoubtedly talking about the still-only-theoretical Higgs boson [wikipedia.org], that's supposed to explain the difference between massless particles like the photon and other particles that have mass. Basically, if the Higgs boson is found, it goes along way to proving various Grand Unified Theories (GUTs) of cosmological physics.
The problem with most GUTs is that they make assumptions that certain things, like the Standard Model of particle physics, are true. The problem is that the Standard Model is unproven, as the Higgs boson has never directly been observed.. If the Higgs boson can be observed, it goes a long way towards proving the Standard Model, which in turn, helps to support various GUTs that depend on the Standard Model.
You're giving the Standard Model a bit of a hard rap there, aren't you? While it's technically true to state that it's "unproven" (as are all physical theories, pretty much by definition), it is among the most thoroughly tested scientific theories in history, and has been validated to extremely high degrees of precision. This gives most people some degree of confidence in the theory, even if it may not be fully fleshed out yet.
The Higgs boson is basically the last untested facet of the theory - if it shows up in the expected region without any additional fuss, the model is pretty much entirely successful within present experimental limits and particle physicists are back to digging through the last few orders of decimal places to discover new effects.
The problem with most GUTs is that they make assumptions that certain things, like the Standard Model of particle physics, are true.
Additionally, all GUTs make assumptions. Not only that, but all of science and mathematics are based on assumptions. You see, at some point assumptions are required. These assumptions aren't exactly outlandish, far from it! You would have an extremely hard time proving that the assumptions they are using are wrong, or incomplete and coming up with new and better ones. It has happened quite a few times (Copernicus for example), but it isn't very often, and it can result in unbelievable fame. Einstein was one of those guys who challenged assumptions and conclusions. Einstein was, partially of course, responsible for the birth of quantum mechanics.
Not only that, but people constantly challenge and check these assumptions as technology progresses. For example, physicists as recently as 2003 (and probably even more recently than that) used an astronomical technique to experimentally determine the weak equivalence principle, an idea originating to Newton way back in 1687 with Principia, to an accuracy of 1 + or - 10^-18. Astonishing!
(The weak equivalence principle is the assumption that when you write F=ma=-G[(M*m)/(r^2)] the little "m" in the middle equals the little "m" on the right.)
These are things that ZombieWomble pointed out when he tried to explain why popular GUTs assume that the Standard Model is true, as I have reproduced below.
ZombieWomble
While it's technically true to state that [the Standard Model is] "unproven" (as are all physical theories, pretty much by definition), it is among the most thoroughly tested scientific theories in history, and has been validated to extremely high degrees of precision. This gives most people some degree of confidence in the theory, even if it may not be fully fleshed out yet.
I would like to add to this. The reason that physicists pursuing a GUT (such as string theory) assume that the Standard Model is correct, is because it is, Higgs boson or no*. A GUT must "reduce to" the predictions of the Standard Model in its limit just as The Special Theory of Relativity (relativistic kinetic energy) reduces to (or does not conflict with) the Newtonian formulation in the classical limit. *The predictions made by the Standard Model, to the limits explored thus far by the Tevatron, agree with experiment.
You responded to ZombieWomble with:
morgan_greywolf
Einstein once criticized quantum physicists for building unproven theories on top of other unproven theories, and I believe the Standard Model was one of them.
To this I just have to ask, what's your point? Remember ZombieWomble talking about how all physical theories are unprovable "pretty much by definition"? Einstein publicly criticized a lot of things. To me this criticism is not very interesting, or insightful. Physics is about building the best model we can to describe the universe. If talking about particles being points, strings, or even tiny little Jesus dolls makes the math work out awesomely, who cares that our awesome new GUT that makes novel and accurate predictions says that a photon is actually a little Jesus doll? I sure don't.
One more thing that might interest you: physics is circular. How do you like that?
They are undoubtedly talking about the still-only-theoretical Higgs boson
The fools! Most type-13 planets destroy themselves when they attempt to determine the mass of the Higgs boson and accidentally shrink the planet to the size of a pea.
This whole 'God Particle' term is an embarrassment to science, it sounds catchy but just gets the religious believers excited. Maybe we should've called stem cells 'god' cells, and maybe Bush wouldn't have cut its research funding.
Finding the Higgs boson will confirm scientists' most complete theory of the universe and the matter from which it is created. "It's probably the closest to God that we'll get," said Jos Engelen, Cern's chief scientist.
Main Entry: Joke
Pronunciation: 'jOk
Function: noun 1 a : something said or done to provoke laughter; especially : a brief oral narrative with a climactic humorous twist b (1) : the humorous or ridiculous element in something (2) : an instance of jesting : KIDDING c : PRACTICAL JOKE d : LAUGHINGSTOCK
2 : something not to be taken seriously : a trifling matter -- often used in negative constructions
It's often referred to as the God particle because of its significance in physics, it would explain why matter has mass.
It probably also has a lot to do with the fact that the existance of the Mass-Free Higgins Boson particle was theoretically predicted, but has never been observed (until now?). This elusiveness to be observed and hence proven it existed is probably the reason why it got this nickname...
I thought the Higgs-Boson was mass free because of it's nature as the particule responsible for mass...
Upon reading wikipedia, I was wrong: link [wikipedia.org]
The Standard Model does not predict the value of the Higgs boson mass. If the mass of the Higgs boson is between 115 and 180 GeV, then the Standard Model can be valid at energy scales all the way up to the Planck scale (1016 TeV). Many theorists expect new physics beyond the Standard Model to emerge at the TeV-scale, based on unsatisfactory properties of the S
"God"? What has god got to do with this?" Well it could be the use of God in the scientific way meaning that all other particles come from this one particle. Or it could be using the term God as in the creator of all things which is pretty much the same as the first.
So the real question is are you ask because you are an extreme theist nut case that takes offense at the idea of a God particle because it is an affront to God, or are you an Extreme atheist whack job that takes offense at any use of the word God because it infringes on not having the idea of a supreme being mentioned in your presence?
Notice that is really is hard to tell the nut job from the wack job.
The term "god particles" was pushed by the Nobel prizewinning particle physicist Leon Lederman (though he may not have invented the term) he even wrote a popular book with this name. He was Director of Fermilab back in the early nineties during the push to get congressional funding for the Superconducting Super Collider which was designed to find the Higgs Boson.
I think he pushed the term to try to get approval from the religious right in congress who were typically suspicious about funding big science. They SSC ended not getting funding anyway. Primarily because of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the congressman no longer felt the need to pony up for any big project the physicists proposed as which they thought would give them technical superiority over the Soviets (and maybe the new super weapon of mass destruction). So the funding motion fell.
The religious right was certainly not going to fund the cathedrals of science. Anyway Lederman was not really using the term in the sense that Christians or religious Jews would, but rather in the same way that Einstein used the word "God" to mean the totality of physical law.
I can't remember if it was specifically mentioned in the Russian "Solyaris" (subtitled movies don't seem to stick as well in my memory) but in the American remake it was suggested by one character that the "visitors" were a result of a "Higgs field". Later a device is constructed based on that assumption that is able to destroy at least one visitor.
The current rumor, which comes in time for the summer conference circuit, may be different. It claims an experiment at the Tevatron has found a peak twice as high as the previous rumors' bumps. And unlike the other rumors, this one includes details: the new particle's mass, for instance, which fits within theoretical bounds on the standard model Higgs. Some versions include a decay chain, which describes what the new particle turned into as the experiment progressed, and which may be consistent with the standard model's predictions.
the higgs particle is one of the last yet undiscovered predictions of the standard model.
But what happens if the Higgs turns out to be just right? Well, then the standard model predicts that you'd need a machine roughly a quadrillion times more powerful than the LHC to find anything new.
if we find the higgs it makes the standard model more convincing as far as its predictive power but by no means means it is correct.
Looking at this blog [wordpress.com] linked to from the Slate article, one thing that seems inconsistent with the Slate article's interpretation is that they're saying that the observations aren't consistent with a standard-model Higgs; it would have to be something outside the standard model, like, e.g., a supersymmetric Higgs. (Actually, I'm not really clear on what a "supersymmetric Higgs" means; is it two particles, a Higgs plus its supersymmetric partner?) The Slate article, however, raises the idea that the observations might simply confirm the standard model, and that would be it. Am I misunderstanding something?
Is the Tevatron still running? If so, could it be the sort of thing where the collaboration might just be trying to collect more data, so as to make it an 8-sigma observation instead of a 4-sigma one?
Supersymmetric Higgs is the equivalent particle (actually 5 particles, IIRC) to the Standard Model's Higgs boson which is predicted by a Quantum Field Theory which includes supersymmetry and predicts all of the particles that we have already seen.
IIRC, the standard model Higgs has not been excluded yet. But a whole lot of people are expecting to see SUSY (supersymmetry) at the LHC, so those same people also expect to see a SUSY Higgs rather than a standard model Higgs.
The Tevatron is still running, and running better than it ever has been before (higher luminousity). Well over 2 fb^-1 of data have been taken so far, and by the end in 2009, about 8 fb^-1 are expected. A few months ago, CDF published a new measurement of the W boson mass, which is coupled to the Higgs mass, which suggested that the Higgs mass ought to be fairly low. A fairly low mass Higgs might be observable at the Tevatron, so a whole lot more people than before are looking for the Higgs a whole lot harder than before. This W mass measurement is probably the "rumor" referred to in TFSummary.
Of course, we can't just look at one event and say "Oh look! I saw the Higgs boson!" There are a lot of other processes that have signatures very similar to the Higgs signature (I've worked on measuring one of those processes, Z + b jet), so we need to have a lot of Higgs events in order to distinguish them from background events. The top quark discovery was announced with, IIRC, 22 top pair events. I'd guess that we'll need even more than that number of Higgs events to have a decent Higgs discovery measurement.
Even if the Tevatron does discover the Higgs, don't worry, there will still be plenty for the LHC to do. Measure the properties of the Higgs, for one. But more importantly, within a few months of LHC startup, we should see SUSY.
Also, I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Fermilab and CERN are not in competition. CDF and D0 might be considered to be in competition, as might ATLAS and CMS. But not really even with those pairs. It is science, and it is scientists. We are concerned with getting science done, wherever it is done. An enormous number of the people at Fermilab now are either already also working at CERN or are planning to start CERN work soon. The fact that a Fermilab designed system failed is not indicative that Fermilab is trying to sabotage CERN, but rather just that people make mistakes. Fermilab has no incentive to sabotage CERN.
Supersymmetric Higgs is the equivalent particle (actually 5 particles, IIRC) to the Standard Model's Higgs boson which is predicted by a Quantum Field Theory which includes supersymmetry and predicts all of the particles that we have already seen.
A few corrections. a SUSY Higgs is NOT the equivalent of adding 5 new particles to the SM but, infact involves doubling the number of particles and then adding 4 new Higgs bosons (since the SM already has one). What you are thinking of is a two Higgs doublet model which does NOT require SUSY i.e. we can have 5 Higgs bosons without Supersymmetry.
But more importantly, within a few months of LHC startup, we should see SUSY.
Woa! Nobody should expect to see SUSY ANYWHERE! For all we know, although it is a beautiful theory, it may be completely wrong! Even if it does occur in nature it may not occur within reach of the LHC energies. While the solution to the fine tuning problem would require SUSY at a "low" energy (compared to the GUT scale!) the upper limit is very rough. If SUSY occurs at 10TeV it is somewhat unnatural but by no means a huge problem even 100Tev is probably not out of the question - and this is assuming that nature uses SUSY to solve finte tuning - it may well not. Don't get me wrong - I'm someone looking for SUSY - and I hope to see it but it is by no means expected no matter how keen theorists get about it!
I'm getting rather bothered by continuously seeing these/. posts implying that scientists are so non-cooperative. The last few stories about LHC have even nearly insinuated that it was somehow Fermilab's fault that there were design issues with the magnet structures, almost as if the mistakes had been intentional.
Perhaps the men and women working in the more news-worthy branches of accelerator physics have to try and defeat each other. My experiences have only ever been constructive and helpful; contemporaries offering knowledge, insight and advice to help my research succeed, rather than breaking the equipment so they can steal the glory.
I hope that/. editors become aware of the slant they have continuously put on the LHC setback stories.
I'm getting rather bothered by continuously seeing these/. posts implying that scientists are so non-cooperative. The last few stories about LHC have even nearly insinuated that it was somehow Fermilab's fault that there were design issues with the magnet structures, almost as if the mistakes had been intentional.
The scientists are not to blame. Fermilab has a herd of bison. We fiddled with the magnet structures. We're not so dumb as we look.
I suspect that if you dug a little deeper, you would find that the scientists who are running experiments at Fermilab are, largely, the same scientists that will be running experiments at CERN once it's completed.
I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
You see, it's the scientists who get the grants, not the collider, and the scientists will rent time on whatever collider they think is suitable for their experiments.
... are these large hadrons anyway? Couldn't they have built a small prototype machine for colliding tiny hadrons first, then scaled up when they had got it all sorted out? Idiots!
Because if this particle exists, and behaves as described, that would mean that you'd find enough energy for a "big bang" in, say, a cubic meter of empty space.
In short, this particle has enough energy for massive events, and it's omnipresent.
Also it decays, meaning that (minute quantities of...) matter are constantly being created, due to the off chance that a higgs boson would decay into a top and bottom quark and one of the top quarks decays into an electron and a few other things that will combine into a proton and voila... a hydrogen atom... out of nowhere. Literally out of nowhere.
Eventually, gravity (in short : by passing through a black hole, yes through, you read correctly), it will recombine into the original higgs boson.
So basically this will reduce "God"'s role in the creation of the universe further back before the big bang, by essentially verifying another prediction by the standard model, which will probably result in the following "creation" facts : 1) the universe has always existed, it neither came into existance, nor will it "ever" end (which is a bogus question anyway, since time only exists INSIDE the universe, it's pointless to ask what was there before the beginning of time, like it's pointless to ask where the moon is on the surface of the earth : it just isn't a location) 2) there are many, many, many big bangs, ours was neither the first, nor will it be the last, a big bang will occur "spontaneously" every x (trillion trillion) years. 3) the reason we haven't heard from people created in other big bangs is simple : it's not possible due to the massive distances involved, which are uncrossable, even by mere (massless) light.
So basically this will reduce "God"'s role in the creation of the universe further back before the big bang, by essentially verifying another prediction by the standard model, which will probably result in the following "creation" facts:
In such debates, people always miss the deeper question. If you have a spectacularly wonderful description of all the laws of physics which completely describe how the universe was created, then how did those laws of physics come into being?
If you explain that with more laws which create the next set of laws, then how did those laws come into being? Surely it's not turtles all the way down.
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday June 05 2007, @02:53PM (#19402191)
You have the same exact problem with "God" explanations, as well.
How did the God come into being?
If God were self-existent, why not the Universe? Wouldn't it be more sensible to have a self-existent universe, than a self-existent God, who is by definition separate from the Universe? (by def: if not by def, then why use another term than "Universe" or "Nature"?)
Remember God was invented 10 thousand years ago by people living as sheep herders. Maybe the language has been confused in all those years, and they simply meant something that is too big and we can't understand: the universe.
If the particle is everywhere, it means it is the fabric of the ether.
That's brilliant if it's true. If God == Universe, then...
It also means that God is everywhere, so the Christians (and others) are correct. And that Earth worship is justified because it's part of God, so the Pagans are correct. It could even suggest that Angels and prophets carrying the word of God were space-travelers and scientists, trying to teach less knowledgeable people about the Universe and how to live safely and healthily. And when we die, our matter and energy become one with the Universe, so we do indeed meet our maker.
So, I guess the real question is whether the universe itself (or God if you prefer) has it's own self-awareness and intelligence.
So basically this will reduce "God"'s role in the creation of the universe further back before the big bang
Why must we use physics to support atheistic antagonization of religious people? What relation does one thing have to another? I'll give you a tip here: If someone believes in God today, the discovery of a new particle tomorrow won't make the stop believing.
There's no room for argumentation; if you posit the existence of an all-powerful god, then it would be within that god's power to make the universe however he chose. He could have made it so that all scientific evidence and all possible human understanding would imply that the universe had always existed. If you held this belief, it would not be the sort of belief that science deals with, and therefore no amount of scientific discovery could take away from it.
And before you start flaming me, calling me a crazy zealot or whatever you like, it may be worthwhile to note that I don't hold the sort of belief I'm describing. I just wish that people wouldn't waste all this energy antagonizing each other for no reason. If your grand hope for science is to refute some religion's particular creation myth, then you'll only waste your own time and try other people's patience.
It's been ages since I posted anything on/., but I simply couldn't let this go.
Religion is properly in the business of describing the natural world...
Religion proffers numerous unprovable, often flatly wrong, assertions about the natural world, and relates these unprovables to a supernatural world. References abound - here's one winner: "It still moves [wikipedia.org]".
Your soda can analogy is faulty, as both participants in the discussion are describing testable observations of said soda can. Religion, on the other hand, offers no testable observations (not unlike certain modern cosmological theories, by the way).
You assert that religion "informs our relationship to the universe"; in fact, religion obscures our relationship with the natural world, by positing thunderbolt-wielding gods, fairies in the forest, and numerous ridiculous stories about reward or punishment in the "next world", or reincarnation as a cat. And noodly appendages, but that's another story.
Unfortunately, where your discussion finally fails is here:
...because the religious explanation cannot be refuted by empirical facts or scientific theories.
Consistently and steadily, the diligent and careful application of reason and the scientific method have pulled away the veil religion and other superstitions have placed before humanity's sight. In the long run, religious explanations have repeatedly yielded to the supremacy of tolerance, reason and science, and they ever will.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
Because if this particle exists, and behaves as described, that would mean that you'd find enough energy for a "big bang" in, say, a cubic meter of empty space.
No, the existence or nonexistence of the Higgs doesn't imply any particular value for the zero-point energy of the vacuum [wikipedia.org] or the cosmological constant. Actually, nobody has the faintest idea how to calculate the cosmological constant from first principles. When they try, they get answers that are something like 10^100 times bigger than what's actually observed. In any case, the cosmological constant is already known, with fairly small error bars (as things like these go in cosmology). The Higgs is part of the standard model, and the standard model fails miserably to explain the observed value of the cosmological constant. One of the attractive features of supersymmetry (which may or may not be true, independently of the existence of the Higgs) is that it helps to explain how a lot of the vacuum energy could cancel out neatly.
Also it decays, meaning that (minute quantities of...) matter are constantly being created, due to the off chance that a higgs boson would decay into a top and bottom quark and one of the top quarks decays into an electron and a few other things that will combine into a proton and voila... a hydrogen atom... out of nowhere. Literally out of nowhere.
No, if the Higgs exists, then it exists in nature only as a virtual particle. In this respect, it's no different from the W and the Z. The W and Z exist as virtual particles in any vacuum, and they have certain decay modes, but those decay modes aren't observed in a vacuum, because they're virtual particles.
So basically this will reduce "God"'s role in the creation of the universe further back before the big bang
No. The (standard) big bang model says that the big bang was a singularity where time began. According to the standard big bang model, there was no "before."
The rest of your list (points 1-3) show a complete failure to understand basic ideas about the big bang model, such as the fact that the big bang was not an explosion that took place within a preexisting spacetime.
He's been following it since the rumor first surfaced. Imagine how the LHC folks will feel if this turns out to be accurate. Billions spent to search for a particle that is found before their collider is even complete.
The LHC is not being built for the express purpose of finding the Higgs boson. It's being built to find whatever there is to find at very high energies, and the Higgs boson is simply one of the most anticipated possibilities. There are four main detectors around the acceleration ring, and each contains a bewildering array of instrumentation to detect all sorts of things that might occur. Even if Fermilab beats LHC to this particular confirmation, there is plenty of purpose to continuing LHC, contrary to the/. summary's implication.
They care about finding out one way or another so they can move on to other investigations. Many scientists are just as happy to find out the theory they are testing is *disproven* as they are when it's *proven*. It's about advancing the body of knowledge.
I've long held (mostly out of sheer amusement) that the reason we haven't been contacted by space aliens is that every intelligent species proceeds through roughly the same sequence of scientific discovery, and they all get to an inevitable point of trying an experiment which invariably wipes out their entire planet & civilization. We almost had it with the first nuke test, when scientists allegedly acknowledged there was a non-trivial chance that detonating the first fusion bomb would set the planet on
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday June 05 2007, @02:09PM (#19401495)
For some reason I instantly imagine a picture of Cmdr. Taco, captioned in big block letters, "Me can has proof reader?" And a picture of Cowboy Neal captioned, "im in yer posts, mesin up yer speling"
You mean the SSC which was to be built in Texas, 54 mile circumference and only 15 miles of tunnel bored built before funding pulled in 1993.
I worked on part of the design SSC (haha yeah, me and hundreds of other engineers and physicists, my job at Fermilab was a very very minor)
Sure, accelerators can be used by schools (indeed Fermilab for example is run by consortium of universities), but they're very very expensive. If standard model is verified there really isn't much more to be learned in high ene
Indeed. But it does occasionally merge with the h and e quarks. Thus the formation of "the" grammartron.
Apparently though, in an electromagnetic field the h and the e quarks can get reveresed forming "teh" anti-grammartron. This has also been noticed with the r and o quarks in the "pron" anti-grammartron and the strange spontaneous phase shift of the o->p quark in the "pwned" anti-grammartron.
god? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:god? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:god? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:god? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:god? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Higgs boson is basically the last untested facet of the theory - if it shows up in the expected region without any additional fuss, the model is pretty much entirely successful within present experimental limits and particle physicists are back to digging through the last few orders of decimal places to discover new effects.
Parent
Re:god? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only that, but people constantly challenge and check these assumptions as technology progresses. For example, physicists as recently as 2003 (and probably even more recently than that) used an astronomical technique to experimentally determine the weak equivalence principle, an idea originating to Newton way back in 1687 with Principia, to an accuracy of 1 + or - 10^-18. Astonishing!
(The weak equivalence principle is the assumption that when you write F=ma=-G[(M*m)/(r^2)] the little "m" in the middle equals the little "m" on the right.)
These are things that ZombieWomble pointed out when he tried to explain why popular GUTs assume that the Standard Model is true, as I have reproduced below.
ZombieWomble
I would like to add to this. The reason that physicists pursuing a GUT (such as string theory) assume that the Standard Model is correct, is because it is, Higgs boson or no*. A GUT must "reduce to" the predictions of the Standard Model in its limit just as The Special Theory of Relativity (relativistic kinetic energy) reduces to (or does not conflict with) the Newtonian formulation in the classical limit. *The predictions made by the Standard Model, to the limits explored thus far by the Tevatron, agree with experiment.
You responded to ZombieWomble with:
morgan_greywolf
One more thing that might interest you: physics is circular. How do you like that?
Parent
Re:god? (Score:4, Funny)
The fools! Most type-13 planets destroy themselves when they attempt to determine the mass of the Higgs boson and accidentally shrink the planet to the size of a pea.
Parent
Re:god? (Score:4, Funny)
Interviewer: Can you destroy the Earth.
The Tick: Egad, I hope not! That's where I keep all my stuff!
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This whole 'God Particle' term is an embarrassment to science, it sounds catchy but just gets the religious believers excited. Maybe we should've called stem cells 'god' cells, and maybe Bush wouldn't have cut its research funding.
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*please mod informative, please mod informative*
Parent is -1 Flamebait material (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:god? (Score:5, Informative)
It's often referred to as the God particle because of its significance in physics, it would explain why matter has mass.
It probably also has a lot to do with the fact that the existance of the Mass-Free Higgins Boson particle was theoretically predicted, but has never been observed (until now?). This elusiveness to be observed and hence proven it existed is probably the reason why it got this nickname...
Parent
blame Mr. Lederman (Score:3, Informative)
I think he's also attributed to the wiki-quote...
Error (Score:3, Informative)
Upon reading wikipedia, I was wrong: link [wikipedia.org]
The Standard Model does not predict the value of the Higgs boson mass. If the mass of the Higgs boson is between 115 and 180 GeV, then the Standard Model can be valid at energy scales all the way up to the Planck scale (1016 TeV). Many theorists expect new physics beyond the Standard Model to emerge at the TeV-scale, based on unsatisfactory properties of the S
Re:god? (Score:5, Funny)
Well it could be the use of God in the scientific way meaning that all other particles come from this one particle.
Or it could be using the term God as in the creator of all things which is pretty much the same as the first.
So the real question is are you ask because you are an extreme theist nut case that takes offense at the idea of a God particle because it is an affront to God, or are you an Extreme atheist whack job that takes offense at any use of the word God because it infringes on not having the idea of a supreme being mentioned in your presence?
Notice that is really is hard to tell the nut job from the wack job.
Parent
obKirk (Score:3)
Re:god? (Score:5, Informative)
I think he pushed the term to try to get approval from the religious right in congress who were typically suspicious about funding big science. They SSC ended not getting funding anyway. Primarily because of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the congressman no longer felt the need to pony up for any big project the physicists proposed as which they thought would give them technical superiority over the Soviets (and maybe the new super weapon of mass destruction). So the funding motion fell.
The religious right was certainly not going to fund the cathedrals of science. Anyway Lederman was not really using the term in the sense that Christians or religious Jews would, but rather in the same way that Einstein used the word "God" to mean the totality of physical law.
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It replaced SunOS?
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Higgs is the GOD particle (Score:5, Informative)
the higgs particle is one of the last yet undiscovered predictions of the standard model.
if we find the higgs it makes the standard model more convincing as far as its predictive power but by no means means it is correct.
Re:Higgs is the GOD particle (Score:4, Interesting)
Looking at this blog [wordpress.com] linked to from the Slate article, one thing that seems inconsistent with the Slate article's interpretation is that they're saying that the observations aren't consistent with a standard-model Higgs; it would have to be something outside the standard model, like, e.g., a supersymmetric Higgs. (Actually, I'm not really clear on what a "supersymmetric Higgs" means; is it two particles, a Higgs plus its supersymmetric partner?) The Slate article, however, raises the idea that the observations might simply confirm the standard model, and that would be it. Am I misunderstanding something?
Is the Tevatron still running? If so, could it be the sort of thing where the collaboration might just be trying to collect more data, so as to make it an 8-sigma observation instead of a 4-sigma one?
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Re:Higgs is the GOD particle (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC, the standard model Higgs has not been excluded yet. But a whole lot of people are expecting to see SUSY (supersymmetry) at the LHC, so those same people also expect to see a SUSY Higgs rather than a standard model Higgs.
The Tevatron is still running, and running better than it ever has been before (higher luminousity). Well over 2 fb^-1 of data have been taken so far, and by the end in 2009, about 8 fb^-1 are expected. A few months ago, CDF published a new measurement of the W boson mass, which is coupled to the Higgs mass, which suggested that the Higgs mass ought to be fairly low. A fairly low mass Higgs might be observable at the Tevatron, so a whole lot more people than before are looking for the Higgs a whole lot harder than before. This W mass measurement is probably the "rumor" referred to in TFSummary.
Of course, we can't just look at one event and say "Oh look! I saw the Higgs boson!" There are a lot of other processes that have signatures very similar to the Higgs signature (I've worked on measuring one of those processes, Z + b jet), so we need to have a lot of Higgs events in order to distinguish them from background events. The top quark discovery was announced with, IIRC, 22 top pair events. I'd guess that we'll need even more than that number of Higgs events to have a decent Higgs discovery measurement.
Even if the Tevatron does discover the Higgs, don't worry, there will still be plenty for the LHC to do. Measure the properties of the Higgs, for one. But more importantly, within a few months of LHC startup, we should see SUSY.
Also, I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Fermilab and CERN are not in competition. CDF and D0 might be considered to be in competition, as might ATLAS and CMS. But not really even with those pairs. It is science, and it is scientists. We are concerned with getting science done, wherever it is done. An enormous number of the people at Fermilab now are either already also working at CERN or are planning to start CERN work soon. The fact that a Fermilab designed system failed is not indicative that Fermilab is trying to sabotage CERN, but rather just that people make mistakes. Fermilab has no incentive to sabotage CERN.
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A few corrections (Score:5, Informative)
A few corrections. a SUSY Higgs is NOT the equivalent of adding 5 new particles to the SM but, infact involves doubling the number of particles and then adding 4 new Higgs bosons (since the SM already has one). What you are thinking of is a two Higgs doublet model which does NOT require SUSY i.e. we can have 5 Higgs bosons without Supersymmetry.
But more importantly, within a few months of LHC startup, we should see SUSY.
Woa! Nobody should expect to see SUSY ANYWHERE! For all we know, although it is a beautiful theory, it may be completely wrong! Even if it does occur in nature it may not occur within reach of the LHC energies. While the solution to the fine tuning problem would require SUSY at a "low" energy (compared to the GUT scale!) the upper limit is very rough. If SUSY occurs at 10TeV it is somewhat unnatural but by no means a huge problem even 100Tev is probably not out of the question - and this is assuming that nature uses SUSY to solve finte tuning - it may well not. Don't get me wrong - I'm someone looking for SUSY - and I hope to see it but it is by no means expected no matter how keen theorists get about it!
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Not (Score:5, Funny)
Science =/ competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the men and women working in the more news-worthy branches of accelerator physics have to try and defeat each other. My experiences have only ever been constructive and helpful; contemporaries offering knowledge, insight and advice to help my research succeed, rather than breaking the equipment so they can steal the glory.
I hope that
Moo ha ha! (Score:3, Funny)
I'm getting rather bothered by continuously seeing these /. posts implying that scientists are so non-cooperative. The last few stories about LHC have even nearly insinuated that it was somehow Fermilab's fault that there were design issues with the magnet structures, almost as if the mistakes had been intentional.
The scientists are not to blame. Fermilab has a herd of bison. We fiddled with the magnet structures. We're not so dumb as we look.
Re:Science =/ competition (Score:5, Insightful)
I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
You see, it's the scientists who get the grants, not the collider, and the scientists will rent time on whatever collider they think is suitable for their experiments.
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Just how big... (Score:5, Funny)
God particle (Score:5, Interesting)
In short, this particle has enough energy for massive events, and it's omnipresent.
Also it decays, meaning that (minute quantities of
Eventually, gravity (in short : by passing through a black hole, yes through, you read correctly), it will recombine into the original higgs boson.
So basically this will reduce "God"'s role in the creation of the universe further back before the big bang, by essentially verifying another prediction by the standard model, which will probably result in the following "creation" facts :
1) the universe has always existed, it neither came into existance, nor will it "ever" end (which is a bogus question anyway, since time only exists INSIDE the universe, it's pointless to ask what was there before the beginning of time, like it's pointless to ask where the moon is on the surface of the earth : it just isn't a location)
2) there are many, many, many big bangs, ours was neither the first, nor will it be the last, a big bang will occur "spontaneously" every x (trillion trillion) years.
3) the reason we haven't heard from people created in other big bangs is simple : it's not possible due to the massive distances involved, which are uncrossable, even by mere (massless) light.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:God particle (Score:4, Interesting)
In such debates, people always miss the deeper question. If you have a spectacularly wonderful description of all the laws of physics which completely describe how the universe was created, then how did those laws of physics come into being?
If you explain that with more laws which create the next set of laws, then how did those laws come into being? Surely it's not turtles all the way down.
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Re:God particle (Score:5, Insightful)
How did the God come into being?
If God were self-existent, why not the Universe? Wouldn't it be more sensible to have a self-existent universe, than a self-existent God, who is by definition separate from the Universe? (by def: if not by def, then why use another term than "Universe" or "Nature"?)
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Re:God particle (Score:5, Interesting)
That's brilliant if it's true. If God == Universe, then...
It also means that God is everywhere, so the Christians (and others) are correct.
And that Earth worship is justified because it's part of God, so the Pagans are correct.
It could even suggest that Angels and prophets carrying the word of God were space-travelers and scientists, trying to teach less knowledgeable people about the Universe and how to live safely and healthily.
And when we die, our matter and energy become one with the Universe, so we do indeed meet our maker.
So, I guess the real question is whether the universe itself (or God if you prefer) has it's own self-awareness and intelligence.
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Re:God particle (Score:5, Insightful)
So basically this will reduce "God"'s role in the creation of the universe further back before the big bang
Why must we use physics to support atheistic antagonization of religious people? What relation does one thing have to another? I'll give you a tip here: If someone believes in God today, the discovery of a new particle tomorrow won't make the stop believing.
There's no room for argumentation; if you posit the existence of an all-powerful god, then it would be within that god's power to make the universe however he chose. He could have made it so that all scientific evidence and all possible human understanding would imply that the universe had always existed. If you held this belief, it would not be the sort of belief that science deals with, and therefore no amount of scientific discovery could take away from it.
And before you start flaming me, calling me a crazy zealot or whatever you like, it may be worthwhile to note that I don't hold the sort of belief I'm describing. I just wish that people wouldn't waste all this energy antagonizing each other for no reason. If your grand hope for science is to refute some religion's particular creation myth, then you'll only waste your own time and try other people's patience.
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Re:Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you going from "Don't use science to antagonise religious people" to "Religious people are insane and allergic to logic" in just one move?
Nice.
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And yet it moves ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Religion proffers numerous unprovable, often flatly wrong, assertions about the natural world, and relates these unprovables to a supernatural world. References abound - here's one winner: "It still moves [wikipedia.org]".
Your soda can analogy is faulty, as both participants in the discussion are describing testable observations of said soda can. Religion, on the other hand, offers no testable observations (not unlike certain modern cosmological theories, by the way).
You assert that religion "informs our relationship to the universe"; in fact, religion obscures our relationship with the natural world, by positing thunderbolt-wielding gods, fairies in the forest, and numerous ridiculous stories about reward or punishment in the "next world", or reincarnation as a cat. And noodly appendages, but that's another story.
Unfortunately, where your discussion finally fails is here:
Consistently and steadily, the diligent and careful application of reason and the scientific method have pulled away the veil religion and other superstitions have placed before humanity's sight. In the long run, religious explanations have repeatedly yielded to the supremacy of tolerance, reason and science, and they ever will.
Again, see: "It still moves [wikipedia.org]".
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Re:God particle (Score:5, Interesting)
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
Because if this particle exists, and behaves as described, that would mean that you'd find enough energy for a "big bang" in, say, a cubic meter of empty space.
No, the existence or nonexistence of the Higgs doesn't imply any particular value for the zero-point energy of the vacuum [wikipedia.org] or the cosmological constant. Actually, nobody has the faintest idea how to calculate the cosmological constant from first principles. When they try, they get answers that are something like 10^100 times bigger than what's actually observed. In any case, the cosmological constant is already known, with fairly small error bars (as things like these go in cosmology). The Higgs is part of the standard model, and the standard model fails miserably to explain the observed value of the cosmological constant. One of the attractive features of supersymmetry (which may or may not be true, independently of the existence of the Higgs) is that it helps to explain how a lot of the vacuum energy could cancel out neatly.
Also it decays, meaning that (minute quantities of ...) matter are constantly being created, due to the off chance that a higgs boson would decay into a top and bottom quark and one of the top quarks decays into an electron and a few other things that will combine into a proton and voila ... a hydrogen atom ... out of nowhere. Literally out of nowhere.
No, if the Higgs exists, then it exists in nature only as a virtual particle. In this respect, it's no different from the W and the Z. The W and Z exist as virtual particles in any vacuum, and they have certain decay modes, but those decay modes aren't observed in a vacuum, because they're virtual particles.
So basically this will reduce "God"'s role in the creation of the universe further back before the big bang
No. The (standard) big bang model says that the big bang was a singularity where time began. According to the standard big bang model, there was no "before." The rest of your list (points 1-3) show a complete failure to understand basic ideas about the big bang model, such as the fact that the big bang was not an explosion that took place within a preexisting spacetime.
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A lot of reasons for skepticism (Score:3, Informative)
He's been following it since the rumor first surfaced. Imagine how the LHC folks will feel if this turns out to be accurate. Billions spent to search for a particle that is found before their collider is even complete.
Purpose of the LHC (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bizarre (Score:5, Insightful)
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"What happens if I press this button?" "Don't..." (Score:3, Interesting)
We almost had it with the first nuke test, when scientists allegedly acknowledged there was a non-trivial chance that detonating the first fusion bomb would set the planet on
Re:"What happens if I press this button?" "Don't.. (Score:4, Funny)
The lack of space aliens is owing to the lack of eight star restaurants. They cannot abide hearing "Do you want fries with that?"
SETI requires closing down McDonalds which is why Clinton refused to fund it.
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Re:Search ... get interesing (Score:5, Funny)
You must bee knew hear.
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Instead of caturdays, how about proofreadays? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: $8,000,000,000 (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, more likely, we could build 1 for $80,000,000,000.
Re:So (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly. After all, there's a reason why he's named Lucifer.
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Re:"interesing"? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:"interesing"? (Score:4, Funny)
Apparently though, in an electromagnetic field the h and the e quarks can get reveresed forming "teh" anti-grammartron. This has also been noticed with the r and o quarks in the "pron" anti-grammartron and the strange spontaneous phase shift of the o->p quark in the "pwned" anti-grammartron.
~X~
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