New Bounds On the Higgs Boson Mass 173
As the LHC continues to run at half power for the next year+, the US-based Tevatron continues to crank out results. Reader hweimer writes "Three new papers in Physical Review Letters present the latest results for the Higgs boson mass coming from Fermilab's Tevatron. The new data mandates that the Higgs boson mass within the standard model lies between 115 and 150 GeV." A year back we discussed the Tevatron's previous shrinking of the search space for the Higgs "God particle."
Re:wasteful (Score:5, Insightful)
wasteful science at it's worst. trying to detect something we can't see, 99.999% (at least) of the worlds population wouldn't care if it was found and finding it would have zero impact on the worlds population. the world of physics and physicists needs to take a good long hard look at itself... and try and work out what it's going to do when the funding runs out... next year
I'm sure nobody technically gives a fuck about electromagnetic waves either, until we made radios and wireless and microwaves and cell phones
I'm sure nobody technically gives a fuck about electrons either, until we made TVs and computer monitors (and electricity itself)
I'm sure nobody technically gives a fuck about photons either, until we made lasers and optical fibers to be the backbone of the Internet
They're literally trying to understand what creates mass. If you don't think anything useful or cool can come out of that, you seriously lack imagination. But since you're ACing I assume you're trolling and I just bought it.
Re:wasteful (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess What - Your perfect world doesn't exist. whilst 99% of the population may not care (I disagree with this statistic also, by the way) the discoveries made will be beneficial to the future populations of this planet.
You may not care about that; however you would not be on the internet, you would not have electric power, you would not have a motor vehicle, you would not have a large market full of goods from around the globe, you would actually have a pretty terrible life if it wasn't for early greek mathematicians Pythagoras, Euclid, Archimedes, to name a (very small) few.
You owe your current lifestyle to these men; and our future generations will owe their lifestyle to our mathematicians and physists - only if they get the funding they need, ney the funding the DESERVE.
Re:Conversion to mass in kg (Score:3, Insightful)
I wish summary articles were written so that most people could understand the terms used.
The trouble is that 10^-27 isn't a tremendously intuitive number. Even being extremely familiar with scientific notation, the magnitude is so small that it really defies any intuitive sense of scale. GeV may not be nearly as familiar as kg but eV (electron volts) are an appropriate unit when dealing with particle energies and so are used in most articles regarding accelerators. Given the choice, I would take eV so that people who are following the progress of the LHC and Tevatron colliders can compare between articles.
Re:wasteful (Score:3, Insightful)
You misspelled "education."
Re:The LHC goes to eleven (Score:4, Insightful)
"why not build two for twice the price?"/crazy scientist cancer guy from "Contact"
Re:wasteful (Score:5, Insightful)
From the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, April 17, 1969, regarding the justification for funding the then-unbuilt Fermilab:
Senator John Pastore: Is there anything connected with the hopes of this accelerator that in any way involves the security of the country?
Robert Wilson: No sir, I don't believe so.
Pastore: Nothing at all?
Wilson: Nothing at all.
Pastore: It has no value in that respect?
Wilson: It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.
Re:To be clear what this means. (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe he made an intelligent, informed comment on Apple or some other heinous sin.
Re:Bounds are Complicated (Score:3, Insightful)
> At a "3 sigma" level (and don't believe any new science that is not at the 3
> sigma level or better),
So I guess you reject pretty much all of biochemistry and medicine?