First Definitive Higgs Result In 7 Years 197
PhysicsDavid writes "In a suite of new results about the Higgs boson, Fermilab presents the first new definitive evidence on the (lack of) existence of the Higgs boson since the Large Electron Positron collider shut down in 2000. Fermilab hasn't found the Higgs, but can rule out a certain range of masses for the particle that is believed to create mass for all the other particles of nature. Other Higgs news suggests a new likeliest mass range of 115 to 135 GeV for the Higgs. These results were among those presented at the ICHEP 2008 conference currently wrapping up in Philadelphia."
Higgs (Score:5, Informative)
Knowing the mass of the higgs is important because it tells us which of our theories is on the right track. For example, a very large higgs would rule out huge branches of string theory, almost killing it. Not finding it at all would rule super symmetry would destroy the standard model, with nothing left to stand it in place.
The 'worst' case is that we find the higgs exactly where we expect it to be, confirming what we pretty much knew already, without adding any new real information.
Re:Higgs (Score:5, Insightful)
The 'worst' case is that we find the higgs exactly where we expect it to be, confirming what we pretty much knew already, without adding any new real information.
Why is that the worst case? Science is the search for truth. Nature and reality don't change based on what we wish. That's the difference between science and magic/religion. We shouldn't care which theory wins out or what we gain from the knowledge. We should only care about which model most resembles what is real and measurable. Since we're talking about deductive reasoning, if we find that what we already know is correct, that still invalidates/eliminates entire other branches of enquiry. That means we don't have to waste time on those branches (unless there are other reasons to do so - and intellectual curiosity and the possibility of finding the unexpected might be reason enough - or we want further confirmation)
What I'm trying to say is that any definite result is a good result and we shouldn't let our emotional biases get in the way of actually doing the science.
Re:Higgs (Score:5, Insightful)
We shouldn't care which theory wins out or what we gain from the knowledge. We should only care about which model most resembles what is real and measurable.
Yes, that's what scientists should care about.
But if you've built a life and well-known career based on something that appears to just have been invalidated, the typical human reaction isn't to accept it, and say, "oh well, time to cancel all my grants, give up my professorship, and start over, even though I'm 50 and have spent 1/2 my life 'studying' string theory".
Re:Higgs (Score:5, Insightful)
A great philosopher described that best:
"Alright!" bawled Vroomfondel banging on an nearby desk. "I am Vroomfondel, and that is not a demand, that is a solid fact! What we demand is solid facts!"
"No we don't!" exclaimed Majikthise in irritation. "That is precisely what we don't demand!"
Scarcely pausing for breath, Vroomfondel shouted, "We don't demand solid facts! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts. I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!"
"But who the devil are you?" exclaimed an outraged Fook.
"We," said Majikthise, "are Philosophers."
"Though we may not be," said Vroomfondel waving a warning finger at the programmers.
"Yes we are," insisted Majikthise. "We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons, and we want this machine off, and we want it off now!"
"What's the problem?" said Lunkwill.
"I'll tell you what the problem is mate," said Majikthise, "demarcation, that's the problem!"
"We demand," yelled Vroomfondel, "that demarcation may or may not be the problem!"
"You just let the machines get on with the adding up," warned Majikthise, "and we'll take care of the eternal verities thank you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?"
"That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
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Sorry, to bust your cynical bubble, but I've seen too many scientists close the book on a lifetime of research when the tests don't pan out.
But you live in your little world were scientists rub their hands together and join in a global conspiracy to keep the truth hidden.
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Re:Higgs (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing the point. This isn't about merely discovering random facts. Yes, it will be nice to know the facts, no matter what, but science is more than a random collection of unanalyzed facts. Some results will do more than merely give us another random truth to add to our collection; some results will allow us to falsify certain theories and not waste time on them any more, which is better than a result that leaves us just as confused as we are now.
And in response to Nutria, who also commented: you have it exactly backwards. A result which eliminates more theories is a better result from a scientific POV. If this were about scientists clinging to their pet theories, then a result which left more theories open would be better (since it would allow more scientists to cling to their favorites), but that's pretty much the opposite of what JohnFluxx was suggesting.
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No no no, the technocracy would like you to think that nature and reality are immutable, but as any of the other orders will tell you, the technocracy is just better at convincing the majority that they are right.
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Hah, play White Wolf's Mage sometime :D
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It's worst case in the sense that it's not all that "interesting", it spurs no new thinking, suggests no departure from the theory stew we have now, etc.
That says nothing about accepting or rejecting the data, etc, it's just not as "fun".
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It's a 'worse' case becasue it doesn't add anything new.
Meaning, it won't be that interesting.
If you find a safe in your backyard, the worse case scenario is that it's empty. It doesn't mean you don't want the truth, only that if it was filled with precious gems* it would be more exciting.
*rolled from the AD&D DMG 1st ed.
SUSY independent of Higgs (Score:2)
Not finding it at all would rule super symmetry would destroy the standard model
It would destroy the SM but would not necessarily rule out Supersymmetry. Existing SUSY models only require two Higgs doublets because we think the Higgs is the way the particles gain their masses and given that assumption SUSY will need at least two of them (though more are not excluded). If the Higgs mechanism is not the way the universe works then who says the new mechanism, whatever it is, will preclude the existence of SUSY? The main argument for SUSY (to explain a light Higgs) may be gone but there a
Re:Higgs (Score:4, Insightful)
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absurd to talk of the untestability of the entire class of string theories when a practical test for favoured theories has just been outlined in the post you're replying to.)
When the class (set) contains an infinite number of elements, being able to successively prove or dis-prove half of the set is NOT useful.
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If I find a green ball in a box of red balls, it is not reasonable to assert that "balls are green" or "balls are red". The strongest assertions I can make are "some balls are green" and "some balls are red". Likewise, it is not reasonable to see untestable string theories and assert "string theories are untestable". The existence of even one exception
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The problem is that string theory is really a metatheory. For any given mass of Higgs, there are enough "knobs" on string theory to be twiddled to make the result appear. The problem is, once you do, there are enough knobs left to make the "theory" say nearly anything at all while continuing to fit all previous data. That is, it doesn't actually predict anything, it "predicts" everything. It's the weather guesser that says a chance of rain all summer just to be safe.
Individual "settings" are testable, but s
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> I mean, it says right there that higgs mass is
> one of the testable predictions of string theory.
It is only testable if we find it; if they (do/can) redefine the theory to explain why it isn't found, if it isn't found, then it is effectively no more testable than Free Will, or that YHWH designed the Universe to appear that it was old to test our faith in a Young Creation, or any other religious statement about the Universe that you might despise.
This is what the AC post is complaining about. Not re
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If string theory could remain valid even when contradictory evidence was presented, then it would be equivalent to young earth creationism, but as you point out, that is not the case
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I didn't know there is such a thing as "class of scientific theories" with any scientific meaning.
I mean, class of combustion theories can't be falsified, because what ever is found about combustion, it would just rule out *some* combustion theories, but "combustion theories" as a class can't ever be disproven. Therefore combustion theories can't be very scientific, because the class of combustion theories can't be disproven... ;-)
OTOH, if string theories really *can* accomodate *anything*, isn't that like
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Isn't string theory dying?
No, it's just getting stained.
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This is what happens when you get your physics advice from XKCD
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It's over 80 years old, technically.
There as been a test whose results were predicted by string theory. Sadly, it requires certain astronomical events to be aligned.
Some results from LHC could disprove it once and for all.
Personally, I hope string theory withstands some tests and pans out. But if it doesn't, oh well.
It CAN be tested, we just don't ahve the ability. That's different then can't be tested.
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... the best brains in the field of physics...
Or perhaps the best branes...
Re:Higgs (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't string theory dying?
Nope. It's just tangled up.
*Rimshot*
Re:Higgs (Score:5, Funny)
Knot yet.
Re:Higgs (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember reading somewhere that some astronomy students, out of perversity, decided to continue working on the Ptolomaic system, adding additional epicycles on top of the ones that were conventional at the time to improve on accuracy, and to add the new planets discovered since then. The end result was a complex system that fairly accurately predicted planetary positions. Of course, it was all done tongue in cheek, but it does demonstrate that certain systems can be tailored ad infinitum to greater levels of accuracy - even if they are wrong in principle.
I wish I could find a link to to this.
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If something, like sufficiently complex Ptolomaic explanation of solar system, matches reality to observational limit, then couldn't it be reduced to the more simple theory we know about (Newtonian or GR) with enough and suitable coordinate transforms, simplification of formulas etc?
If so, then it could be argued that the complex Ptolemaic explanation is equally valid because it is actually equal, just expressed in a needlesly complex way...
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If so, then it could be argued that the complex Ptolemaic explanation is equally valid because it is actually equal, just expressed in a needlesly complex way...
Yes, I agree. As soon as we agree on the relativity of things (the observer on earth gets the right to call himself the center of the universe), you can easily transform the celestial movements to a reference system of your liking.
Still, this does not explain the origin of the motion. Newton would have had a hard time postulating a theory of gravity without Kepler and Galileo describing the motion patterns themselves.
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If so, then it could be argued that the complex Ptolemaic explanation is equally valid because it is actually equal, just expressed in a needlesly complex way...
It is a perfectly valid description of celestial motion. It fails Occam's Razor and provides no insights, but it is a perfectly valid description.
An interesting analogy (that goes fairly far): Epicycles are the digital description (sampling) of the analog ellipse. Given enough cycles (bits + sample rate), the result can reproduce the described motion to any arbitrary precision.
Epicycle description is to ellipse as digital recording is to analog waveform.
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A battery with >1 MJ/kg is important.
1 MJ/kg sounds like a lot of energy (like a stick of dynamite or something), until you look at these [indiana.edu] pages [wikipedia.org] and realize that a loaf of bread has an energy density of 10 MJ/kg. this chart [wikipedia.org] puts things into perspective; the X axis is MJ/kg, and the Y axis is MJ/liter. Current battery technology is dreadfully close to the origin.
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> 1 MJ/kg sounds like a lot of energy [snip] ... a loaf of bread has an energy density of 10 MJ/kg
You can't burn a loaf of bread twice, but you can re-use a battery thousands of times. Total storage capacity, and end-to-end energy use, is orders of magnitude larger.
Maury
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Re:Baloney: if 80+ orders-of-magnitude wrong can b (Score:2)
> Cosmologists are willing to dismiss observations because they don't fit with theory?
Do cell phones cause cancer? Probably not, in spite of people saying they have data to show it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary data, and the data presented so far is nothing close to extraordinary.
Explain how this is any different.
Maury
Newbie question (Score:2)
Would someone explain why mass is expressed in GeV? GeV sounds like a measure of electrical field strength.
Re:Newbie question (Score:5, Informative)
The electron volt [wikipedia.org] is a measure of energy. It is the energy gained by an electron accelerating through an electric field potential of one volt. And since energy and mass are equivalent [wikipedia.org], this miniscule measure of energy also makes for a useful miniscule measure of mass.
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It's a unit of energy that particle physicists use instead of mass. One eV is an electron-volt which is equal to the energy gained by an electron after being sent through a one volt potential. You can use E = m c^2 to convert between energies and masses.
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eV is a measure of "energy", the E in E=mc^2
1 GeV = 1.783Ã--10^â'27 kg
When you're dealing with things that are really tiny, it's easier to use GeVs than 10^-27 kgs.
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GeV = giga electron volt = 10^9 eV. The electron volt (eV) is the amount of energy gained by an electron accelerated by a 1 volt potential.
Finally, E=m c^2 so we generally interchange mass and energy as convenient. Strictly, we should write masses in units of GeV/c^2. However we generally set c=1 so there is no difference between mass and energy. Obviously, in engineering units mass and energy are not the same. However, one can always take a mass, and multiply by the speed of light (in whatever units
Mass actually measured in eV/c^2 (Score:4, Interesting)
Using units of 'GeV' for mass is actually very sloppy and technically wrong because energy and mass do not have the same dimensions and so cannot have the same physical units. The usual excuse is the use of natural units where c=1. However that '1' has dimensions associated with it and so to ensure that those dimensions are preserved you need to include it in the units. Hence mass is actually measured in 'GeV/c2' and not 'GeV'. Similarly momentum can me measured in units of 'GeV/c'.
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It's an issue of semantics. Mass and energy are fundamentally the same.
Not quite. It is possible to have an object with no mass but an energy (e.g. a photon) but you cannot have an object with a mass but no energy. So while they are equivalent, and you can convert one to the other, they are not exactly the same. In much the same way you can have kinetic and potential energy. These are both equivalent forms of energy but again they are not the same.
Also, "c" is a universal constant that never changes.
True, but it is not required that constants be dimensionless.
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Using natural units by setting e.g. c=1, it is also implied that length and time have the same dimensions.
No, you cannot do that. Either length and time always have the same dimensions or they do not. You can change the units for convenience (which is what natural UNITS is all about) but you cannot redefine the dimensionality.
This (along with setting hbar = 1) is particularly useful in particle physics because all quantities can now be expressed in units of mass (GeV), and equations become a lot simpler.
Equations are just as simple, and more correct, using units of GeV/c2: the numbers are exactly the same! Apart from the lack of confusion (does a 90 GeV particle refer to its mass, energy or momentum? - there is a BIG difference!) it makes it very easy to correctly keep track of the dime
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Exactly so. c = hbar = 1, and both are unitless.
No, this is the choice of natural units. You have effectively defined 'c' as your unit of velocity. An example of a unitless (or rather dimensionless) quantity would be pi which, regardless of what units you choose for length (metres, feet, furlongs, hands etc.) always has the same value. Since c can be either '1' or '3e8' depending on the choice of units it cannot be said to be a unitless (or dimensionless) quantity.
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Re:Newbie question part deux (Score:5, Insightful)
The SSC in Texas was 40 TeV, and the LHC at CERN will be 14 TeV when fully operational. They're about to turn on now, but will make their first run at the lower 10 TeV. Fermilab runs at 2 TeV.
Yes, we would have had the answers to all these questions and more 10 years ago, if the SSC hadn't been scrapped.
<soapbox>
The US is at a significant disadvantage when it comes to "big science". Every year, every project must come back to congress and beg for funding, justify their existence, rather than spend that time doing science. As a consequence, funding in the US is extremely volatile. Look at the budget crisis of DOE in December, the zeroing of the ITER budget, and the canceling of the SSC in 1993 for a few examples. Big science is worthwhile. We should figure out how to give scientists some measure of job security, so they can concentrate on science. This is a miniscule portion of the budget.
</soapbox>
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While religious nuts are an easy scapegoat, that's not the problem. As I understand it, it comes down to the fact that no congress can bind any future congress. So no congress can set budget policy in any future year. They can make recommendations (and do), but this isn't guaranteed.
I don't think this problem is insurmountable. I would think that the creation of a certain kind of "scientific trust fund" could enable the use of a pot of money over a long time span.
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no congress can bind any future congress. So no congress can set budget policy in any future year. They can make recommendations (and do), but this isn't guaranteed.
And yet, America is the only country I see consistently restricting themselves like this. Certainly in Britain, one pariliament can't set budget policy for the next, but projects don't have to rejustify funding every year and cancellations of large science projects are rare.
And when it comes to your Presidents... Doesn't Bush seem to be doing a good job of binding spending for the next president? If there is no money...
GeV = mass? (Score:2)
In case anyone else is a confused about this as I was, apparently "by mass-energy equivalence, the electron volt is also a unit of mass. It is common in particle physics, where mass and energy are often interchanged, to use eV/c, or more commonly simply eV with c set to 1, as a unit of mass." And "1 GeV = 1.783×1027 kg." At least according to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_volt [wikipedia.org]
Re:GeV = mass? (Score:4, Informative)
And 1 GeV = 1.783×1027 kg
Slashdot ate your formatting it looks like. I'll write it as 1.783E-27 kg to get around it.
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That would be 10^-27 kg, a very small number, not 1027 kg.
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Turn in your geek card. How could you be confused! Energy-mass equivalence is only described by the most well known formula in history.
E=mc^2
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Very misleading headline (Score:4, Informative)
Not to diminish the importance of the work done at Fermilab, but the headline is very misleading.
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On Slashdot? Never!
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The headline is VERY misleading.
There was no mention at all of what I learned this past Sunday. The minister stood right up and said at the beginning of his sermon that if the Higgs particle was 120GeV or less, that meant that Allah was god and the Muslims were right. If the mass was greater than 120GeV, then that meant that the resurrection and divinity of Jesus was right.
He did say that the latest Fermi results ruled out ENTIRELY the Catholic view that the communion wafers actually turn into the body of C
135 GeV seems very high... (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, I only have a 4 year degree in Physics so maybe someone can help me out on this. If this particle gives the property of mass then shouldn't it have a mass less than that of the lightest particles? According to a quick Google calculation [google.com] this thing out-masses an electron by 5 orders of magnitude.
WTF?
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I took the entire undergrad QM sequence at my school, we covered Liboff cover to cover so I know a little. I am aware that the electron is not the least massive particle, however it is the least massive particle that I know of Google having built into its calculator function.
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You missed the point. His point was that they are saying the elementary mass particle has more mass than a non-elementary mass particle. If a Higgs boson has more mass than an electron, what gives the electron its mass?
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Isn't the proton a hadron?
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Isn't the proton a hadron?
Yes, but if it doesn't 'decay' within 4 hours, it must seek medical attention immediately.
Re:135 GeV seems very high... (Score:4, Informative)
Having a degree in physics means nothing if you didn't do
anything in this branch of physics.
That seems a bit strong. A physics degree does mean that you can
reasonably expect an explanation to be understood without too much
effort on your part.
First off, the electron is not the lightest particle. Strictly
speaking, the electron neutrino weighs in at less than 2.2 eV, where the
electron weighs in at 0.511 MeV. Then you have the tau neutrino, which
weighs in at 15.5 MeV. Then you have the proton, which weighs 938 MeV.
After that we have the tauon, which has a mass of 1.7 GeV. All of which,
so far, are leptons.
I can see where you're going, but you made a careless error. The proton
is not a lepton.
In the standard model, leptons and quarks are fundamental particles.
Leptons and quarks are reflections of each other through a certain
symmetry. But a quark never appears by itself. A quark-antiquark pair
is called a meson (which is a boson because it has whole-integer quantum
spin), and a triplet of quarks, like a proton or neutron, is called a
baryon (which is a fermion because it has half-integer quantum spin). A
hadron is any particle that interacts through the strong force; this
includes mesons and baryons but not leptons.
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Sorry, your post contains several errors.
There are three neutrinos corresponding to electron, muon, and tau, and all three of them weigh less than 1 eV. Furthermore, they all mix with each other, so there are three states, but each is a mixture of electron, muon, and tau-type neutrinos.
The W and Z bosons weigh 80 GeV and 90 GeV respectively. The top quark weighs 172 GeV. The theory would be consistent with a higgs of any mass below about 200 GeV. We have searched in many experiments at lower energie
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You clearly knows more about this than I do; but calling the different neutrinos a mixture of the three flavours of neutrino seems a little lacking.
e, muon and tau neutrinos undergo flavour oscillation, ie change type, but they appear still to be different particles - the particles comprise a mixture of flavour eigenstates that interfere through a mismatch in the mass eigenstates. No I don't understand it fully but a simple mental-model analog might be beat frequencies produced by sound waves in constructiv
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The three physical (mass eigenstate) neutrinos [nu_1, nu_2, nu_3] are mixtures of the three interaction states [nu_e, nu_mu, n_tau] and are related by a rotation matrix R called the MNS matrix. It's just a matrix rotation.
Today we do believe we understand the "solar neutrino problem" in terms of mixing of the three states. For the solar neutrinos, in fact mixing due to matter is dominant (rather than mixing due to the masses). There are numerous neutrino experiments going on today, but so far they have
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Thanks - I didn't know about Double CHOOZ or Daya Bay, seems I'm a bit out of touch!
One more question - do you view the 3 neutrinos mass eigenstates as 3 distinct neutrino type's or as 3 representations of one neutrino with an internal mix of flavours, or something else.
This is where my internal model of particle-wave duality comes a bit unstuck. Like visualising hyperspatial forms (hypercubes or whatever), never could quite lock it down.
Re:135 GeV seems very high... (Score:5, Informative)
In these theories, mass arises of interactions with the Higgs boson. Thus, the Higgs being massive doesn't exclude less massive particles.
Re:135 GeV seems very high... (Score:4, Informative)
Thanks for that hint, I've now found the Higgs mechanism [wikipedia.org] which is currently in the process of giving me a headache.
Higgs field is like ... (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a great analogy for this which will probably help, http://www.hep.ucl.ac.uk/~djm/higgsa.html [ucl.ac.uk] .
IIRC this was the result of a competition by Physics World (the magazine of the Inst. of Phys.).
Mod parent Informative (Score:2)
The link s/he posted has extremely nice analogy. Unfortunately, I have no idea if it is a correct analogy but it is definitely easy to understand and makes sense too. Maybe someone who understands the math behind Higg's mechanism can comment on the aptness of the analogy.
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it made it into Physics World, the mag of the IoP (body for professional UK physicists) - http://physicsworldarchive.iop.org/index.cfm?action=summary&doc=6%2F9%2Fphwv6i9a26%40pwa-xml&qt= [iop.org] and the NewScientist - http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13918902.000----with-a-boson-at-the-tories-cocktail-party-.html [newscientist.com] and is cited at least once at arxiv.org - http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0103023v2 [arxiv.org]
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That is eye opening. The Higgs boson is a rumour being spread around.
Forget this LHC, have they checked Snopes?
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Thanks also - helped me follow what's going on here!
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More than I do. I transferred out in my third year, as I realized that I wanted a job instead of, not after, a PhD.
The reported mass of the Higgs is the rest mass of a real Higgs particle. Mass, according to the theory, comes from interaction with a field of virtual Higgs particles, not a real Higgs merging with a real particle. Thus, if anything
In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
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But have they raised Cthulhu?
Horribly Inelegant (Score:2)
Can someone explain to me why we need something to give mass to something? Can't it just be that matter warps space-time? Since Mass and Energy are equivalent, why can't it just be that energy/mass warps space-time, and that mass is simply the effect we observe in the hree dimensional universe of this warping?
Occam's Razor says the whole concept of the Higgs Boson and the Higgs Field are wrong, much like String Theory.
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Occam's Razor would indeed say that, if it wasn't the case that the Standard Model is a very well tested model for particle physics.
The Higgs mechanism is part of the Standard Model. One of the predictions of this Model is that the quantum of the Higgs field, the Higgs boson, exists. Unfortunately, if it doesn't, it means something has gone seriously wrong with the model, because it's been successful in explaining a great many things.
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Am I the only one who sees a problem with the circular logic of saying, "We need some particle to give particles mass -- wait, what gives mass to the particle that gives particles mass?"
Either mass is an intrinsic value of matter, perhaps based off of the total potential energy bound up in the matter, or according to the standard model, mass is imbued to particles by a special particle which imbues them with mass. Whence then comes the original mass?
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Are you suggesting that mass is some kind of magical property of matter that affects magically? That doesn't really fly with science. No, there needs to be some kind of mechanism for the effect of particle's mass to interact with other particle's masses. Without the mechanism, "mass" has no meaning since it doesn't do anything. But clearly mass does something, so there must be some mechansim for masses to interact, either with "space-time continuum" or directly with other masses. Also there needs to be expl
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Am I the only one who sees a problem with the circular logic of saying, "We need some particle to give particles mass -- wait, what gives mass to the particle that gives particles mass?"
It doesn't mean that the Higgs gives mass to all particles, only to some of them. The standard model requires some particles (gauge bosons) to be massless, otherwise the whole theory leads to inconsistent results. For photons and gluons, this is fine, as current experimental results are consistent with these particles being massless. However, W and Z bosons, are all but massless -- they are even 100 times heavier than protons!
To fix this inconsistency, some very smart physicists came up with the idea to int
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> Am I the only one who sees a problem with the circular logic
Apparently, yes.
For one thing, it's "extra mass", not "mass". The mass of the electron is fully accounted for by it's self-energy. If you integrate the EM field energy over the electron's field, then apply E=mc^2 to that result, you get the right answer.
Higgs is only needed for particles that do not follow this rule, like quarks. Quarks are heavier than their otherwise obvious self-energy can explain. So we postulate another form of "charge" (
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Why does mass/energy warp space-time? What is space-time anyway? Furthermore, why does mass/energy resist being accelerated? Why is the resistance to acceleration always in the exact same proportion to the gravitational effects?
For that matter, why is the universe expansion accelerating? Why does it appear to have undergone the process we call inflation?
The Higgs field can explain all of those things in a way we've never been able to do before. Occam's Razor says the concept of "space-time" as somethin
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not saying I have the answer. I'm just trying to get someone explain to me why one makes more sense than the other. And as to why things mass more than others, I already gave an off the top of my head explanation -- mass is based upon total energy bound up in the matter. This would be why things become more massive as they accelerate.
Re:Overheard at the LHC (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nothing to see here... (Score:5, Informative)
Incidently, why is 115 GeV so hard for the LHC to see. Well at this point the Higgs is too light to decay to WW or ZZ (the W has mass of 80 GeV, Z 91GeV so needs Higgs mass of 160-180 GeV to open those channels). This means that a light Higgs of 115 GeV will decay into the heaviest particle availible to it (remember the more massive the particle, the strong the Higgs coupling) which is the bottom quark. At the Tevatron, the backgrounds to two bottom quarks isnt soo bad and the experimenters are all very experienced at tagging b quarks using their detectors. At the LHC you might as well give up so you have to go through the very rare vector boson fusion channel using a top quark loop to get two photons which itself has a bit of nasty background. Hence you will need 10 fb-1 of data which is *atleast* a years running at the LHC.
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GeV for mass seems odd. Why not use something more practical like percentage of mass of Library of Congress?
An update and a correction (Score:5, Informative)
At the Tevatron, the backgrounds to two bottom quarks isnt soo bad and the experimenters are all very experienced at tagging b quarks using their detectors.
Actually the background for b quarks at the Tevatron is ENORMOUS. b-quarks are produced by the strong interaction at rates far higher than they are produced from any possible Higgs decay. Identifying them is only half the problem: determining what produced them is the other half! The only way that we can see anything is via associated production of a Higgs and a W or Z boson (which are a lot easier to spot). This is a far rarer process than simple Higgs production.
At the LHC you might as well give up so you have to go through the very rare vector boson fusion channel using a top quark loop to get two photons which itself has a bit of nasty background.
You are actually a little out of date here. While the vector boson fusion channel is still used the decay is actually Higgs to two taus or VBF Higgs production with the two associated quarks being top quarks. At least in ATLAS we think that both of these channels will have a higher significance than the photon channel which was the original choice for a low mass Higgs.
Re:Nothing to see here... (Score:4, Informative)
FAIL.
Try again.
They filled it with a ton of European magnets (that worked), Japanese detectors (that worked), and US final focus magnets (that failed).
Sorry to burst your patriotic bubble.
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haha. LHC is a global effort. In fact, all large future colliders will be a global effort. Cost, complexity, and knowledge base requires it.
It's location won't be relevant.
This is a good thing.
And Fermilab isn't desperate. People are creating a false dichotomy. People like you.
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hahaha, what a bunch of crap.
Classic Global Conspiracy.
Since this event happens millions of time in nature, I'm not worried.