LHC Discovers New Particle That Looks Like the Higgs Boson 396
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from the and-it-didn't-consume-the-earth dept.
from the and-it-didn't-consume-the-earth dept.
The wait is over: new submitter Roger W Moore (among many, many other submitters) writes "The ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN have just announced the discovery of a new particle which is consistent with a Standard Model Higgs boson. There is still a lot of work to do to confirm whether this really is the Higgs, and if so whether it is a Standard Model Higgs, but this is a major result."
Found at 125 GeV (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:5, Informative)
That's shorthand, it's GeV/c^2, which is in fact a mass.
Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:4, Funny)
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do we have a standard eye with a known mass and charge?
Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:4, Funny)
Mass and energy are the same damn thing, ever heard of Einstein?
Yeah, that's Doc Brown's dog, what does he have to do with this?
It is the mass (Score:5, Informative)
Hence the mass of each type of particle depends on the zero energy value (vacuum expectation value) of the Higgs field and how strongly the particle couples to it while the mass of the Higgs boson depends on how the energy density of the Higgs field changes as the strength of the field varies.
Re:It is the mass (Score:5, Funny)
[the Higgs field] ... then fills the universe and binds to particles giving them mass.
I'm not a physicist, so please correct me if I misunderstood. Are you saying that this field surrounds us and penetrates us, and that it binds the galaxy together?
No, not really (Score:5, Informative)
The field is everywhere, not just around us but also inside us. Everywhere and anywhere. Comparable to electromagnetic fields, except you can't shield them.
What holds the galaxy (-ies) together is something else, that's gravity. Also a field, extending to fill the universe.
The Higgs particle (or field, can't talk about one without thinking about the other) gives the universe mass (well, it's one of the things that do that) so perhaps some clever brainiacs might be able to think something up connecting the Higgs and gravity in such a way that it unites all the forces. That would be a garuanteed ticket to Stockholm and a place in history as the greatest discovery (or theory, if you like) since the discovery of fire itself.
Re:No, not really (Score:4, Informative)
Just in case you, or someone else, didn't get the reference:
The Force [wikia.com]
Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks, you're right that I didn't get the reference. In retrospect it is obvious...
In my defence I'd like to offer that on a regular day about 67% of my brain activity goes to suppressing the memory of JarJar "MeesaSuckSoBadly" Bincks.
Re:No, not really (Score:5, Funny)
Just in case you, or someone else, didn't get the reference:
The Force [wikia.com]
How is explaining a Star Wars reference on slashdot considered informative? That's like explaining what a bullet is on a gun forum.
Now, explain how to dress, how to coordinate an outfit or what breasts feel like... that would be informative
Your audience, know it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You know when you grab a woman's breast... and it's... and you feel it and it feels like a bag of sand when you touch it...
Re:No, not really (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No, not really (Score:5, Funny)
My the Higgs Bison be with you.
No thanks. They are large, bad tempered animals. Much like politicians.
And they smell just about the same.
Re:No, not really (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, do not so readily compare the two. Bison give us milk, meat, and hides. Politicians - not so much.
Re:No, not really (Score:5, Funny)
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No, that's what we take from the Bison.
What the Bison gives us is shit - just like said politicians.
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I for one would love a politician leather coat. Do I get to select the politician it is made from?
Far too slippery for my taste
Re:No, not really (Score:5, Interesting)
The Higgs field gives particles mass, and gravity acts on mass. Therefore, the Higgs field, while not binding the universe together, is vital for gravity to do so.
it's probably over-simplified (there's no quantum weirdness described), but I think it sums up the link well enough.
A thought occurs - if the Higgs is confirmed, and we find a way to cancel its effect out, hello anti-grav and inertia-free travel!
Maybe we've found the Force after all... :)
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Actually, no. Electricity is something from point A to point B. Gravity is an interaction between A and B. So you an't change the point of reference and get a negative result.
Gravity is really weird.
Re: (Score:3)
You mean the Hutchison Hoax? [skepdic.com]
Re:Objection: Assumes facts not in evidence (Score:5, Informative)
And we have a very good idea of what causes gravity, or rather, what gravity _is_. Gravity is the tendency of spacetime to curve in the presence of objects with mass (and/or energy). This curving of spacetime causes other objects to travel not in straight (relative to our local Minkowski space) line paths, but in curves, when they are close to the first object (and vice versa). Since you can't see the external dimension that spacetime is embedded in where it curves (google "de Sitter-space" if you are interested), you see gravity as a force between massive objects.
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Protip: anyone who claims to have discovered something weird, and then names it after themselves, is most likely a hoax.
so what about this Higgs thing?
Re:Objection: Assumes facts not in evidence (Score:4, Informative)
Peter Higgs didn't name the mechanism. He only theorised about the family of "Lorentz-covariant field theories in which spontaneous breakdown of symmetry under an internal Lie group occurs".
(Yes, that's a direct quote from his second paper.)
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On a more speculative note, it is possible that one day some ultimate theory of everything, unifying all physics in one theory, explains what causes gravity. It is not necessary for a theory of ever
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There is no parade to rain in on, but I do think it's premature to argue categorical impossibilities like the one you're citing - not only from a logical perspective but also historically people like you have almost always been proven wrong. People like me also get proven wrong all the time, the only difference is that sooner or later something almost like the thing we envisioned does come along. Let me put it this way: tech/sci optimists are always on the advance, whereas naysayers have to retreat constantly.
Taking that to its logical conclusion, you are implying that, in time, absolutely anything that you can think of will (bar a few differences in detail) become reality.
I think that is taking "the glass is half full" optimism into the realm of "not only is it half full, but it will inevitably make itself full one day". Things like entropy would suggest otherwise.
Re:It is the mass (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:5, Informative)
The Higgs particle is just the particle manifestation of the Higgs gauge field. Think of it as a huge block of jello through which all massive objects move. 125 GeV is the energy required to scoop out a bit of that jello and isolate it.
Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:4, Informative)
Photons are massless and don't interact with the Higgs field. In fact, it's the opposite of æther theory - almost everything *but* light (and a few other particles) interacts with it ;)
Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:4, Informative)
Yes and no, photon has no mass at rest, but photon never rest. When moving they have the effective mass of their kinetic energy.
Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:5, Interesting)
Photon propagation is affected by gravity, though.
But the Higgs mechanism isn't there to explain gravity. It's there to explain why some particles have rest masses at all. AIUI, a large part of the mass of a proton or neutron is explained by the energy stored in the Strong Nuclear binding field that couples the component quarks, but the Higgs mechanism is there to explain the rest.
Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:5, Insightful)
Beware that there are 2 kinds of mass [wikipedia.org]: (1) inertial mass and (2) gravitational mass. In principle, the Higgs particle helps explain the inertial mass, that is, the resistance of an object to a change in motion. Hence the (in my opinion somewhat poor) analogies of the Higgs field to a snow field or a bowl of syrup, where some particles are sticking into more deeply than others. It's only because of the equivalence principle [wikipedia.org] that inertial and the gravitational mass are indeed "equivalent" (and quantitatively the same), which, if you think about it for long enough (or "too long" if you one of those people who think that all research should only be done for some practical purpose), is actually surprising.
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Bending space is just a fancy mathematical way of reformulating the effect of a force. Similar to reformulating that the train is moving at 100 mph towards you or that you is moving at 100mph towards the train.
That gravity bends space is nothing but a convenient mathematical construction, it doesn't actually mean anything other than affecting all other forces as well.
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Isn't red-shift the result of relative velocities, not energy loss? (Which removes the mystery of where it goes)
Both actually. Red shift can be caused by the result of relative velocities but it can also be caused by moving out of a gravitational field which results in energy loss. For that matter, it can also be caused by the expansion of space over time via Hubble's Law.
Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:5, Informative)
Because of electromagnetic interactions with the atoms on the surface of the mirror
Because, as Einstein's famous General Theory of Relativity explained, gravity is not just a force between two masses like you were taught at school, it's actually a curvature of the geometry of space-time. The maths gets really complex really quickly, hence the web is full of analogies like the rubber-sheet model that can lead laymen to appealing [wikipedia.org] but incorrect conclusions [livejournal.com]. But when you do do the maths, it works astonishingly well [wikipedia.org] - and it's the simplest explanation we have that fits all the observed data.
See the previous answer - no, they wouldn't, because it would need an infinite amount of energy to do so. When you do the math (one example chosen at random is here [jimhaldenwang.com], there are many others) it turns out that the curvature of space-time becomes so strong near a black hole that inside the event horizon, space and time kind of switch roles - to move further away from the centre would mean moving backwards in time.
Sounds a bit kooky in words, true, but makes perfect sense in mathematical terms - and again, GR's predictions have been experimentally verified time and time again.
Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:5, Informative)
Because, as Einstein's famous General Theory of Relativity explained, gravity is not just a force between two masses like you were taught at school, it's actually a curvature of the geometry of space-time.
That's ... debatable. Modeling it as the curvature of the geometry of space-time has worked remarkably well--better than any other model anyone has come up with--but so far, nobody has been able to integrate that model with the Standard Model of QM. We still lack a solid model of quantum gravity. There are several as-yet-unproved models around, some of which are more consistent with the notion of curved space-time than others, but we don't know which is correct.
Quantum gravity is technically outside the domain of both GR and the Standard Model, and we're going to need a modified something to explain everything. Even if that modified something turns out to be some intermediate effect that allows the Standard Model and GR to both be correct in their respective domains. Which is possible, but I think most physicists expect us to find that either the SM of QM or GR will eventually be shown to be no more than a reasonable approximation, much as Newtonian gravity was in its day. What sort of appoximation is a completely open question, though.
Anyway, this latest discovery is a triumph for the Standard Model, not GR. Resolving the differences between SM & GR is a battle for another day. But it's important to remember that we're dealing with models here, and the actual universe is what it is, whether or not it perfectly fits our models. Well ... when I say important, I mean, possibly worth keeping in the back of your mind. Most physicists find it more useful to ignore the quandry, accepting that there eventually will be a resolution, and take both SM and GR at face value, since they've both proven correct in every test we've been able to devise. :)
Re:Rest mass versus relativistic mass (Score:4, Interesting)
The E in E =mc^2 refers to the rest energy, which is indeed zero for a photon. There's also a component related to motion, and it can be shown from relativity that the total energy is given by E^2 = p^2c^2 + m^2c^4. For a photon of course, this means that E=pc.
Relativistic mass is a rather useless concept, since it doesn't behave as we'd intuitively think that mass would, and is in any case equivalent to the total energy mentioned above. Best to stick to rest mass, which has the useful feature of being independent of frame of reference.
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In the sense that luminiferous aether failed to adequately describe physical phenomena, then yes it was a failure of science. However, it can also be viewed that that failure helped spur scientists on to discover quantum electrodynamics. Which means it wasn't a failure.
That's the beauty of science - if a theory is proved wrong, it's no big deal - a new theory is created to pick up the pieces.
Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:4, Funny)
More importantly, with increased knowledge of the subatomic mechanics of mass we may still be on track for hoverboards and flying cars by 2015!
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Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:5, Informative)
Where does a wave on the ocean go? The "particles" are manifestation of a particle(or force) field, which is like an ocean with waves on it. These waves are called particles when they collide and collapse with something else, but are otherwise waves when they move around on the ocean. There is always some waves on the ocean but not always high enough waves to break over the sea-barrier. The sea barrier in this case is 125GeV.
Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:5, Informative)
The mass of helium is 4.002602 g/mol. Divide by Avogdro's number, and a single atom of helium weighs 6.646E-24 g. The difference in mass is what powers the sun. Parent is simply making the same argument on the scale of a proton split into its parts.
(disclaimer: I know, blabla deuterium, not protons and neutrons. However, see the definition of a state function.)
Re:Found at 125 GeV (Score:4)
Massive (Score:5, Funny)
This is a weighty finding.
Re:Massive (Score:4, Funny)
This is a weighty finding.
It's massive.
Re:Massive (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, 6 beers in and I couldn't help myself
Re:Massive (Score:5, Interesting)
That's what she said.
You are oddly correct. Fabiola Gianotti [wikipedia.org] is in charge of the ATLAS detector.
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Why are things so heavy in the future? Has the Earth's gravity increased or something?
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That explains it!!! I am not a fat bastard gravity is just increasing. Someone get me a steak! :)
Careful Announcement (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Careful Announcement (Score:5, Informative)
That's because they're not in competition as such. The results are complimentary. The Tevatron was able to isolate the same signal, just to a lower degree of precision (2.9 sigma as opposed to 5.0 sigma).
Re:Careful Announcement (Score:4, Interesting)
And there are plenty of smart people in Batavia sitting atop the dormant tevatron (literally), in their little glass box linked to CERN, working on this. It looks like a mini NORAD in there.
It's not a football game. It's a scientific pursuit.
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Dr. Higgs himself said it best... (Score:5, Informative)
In the press conference, Dr. Higgs summed the findings up nicely: "This is an achievement in experimental methodology." To detect this signal has required a momentous effort, and the good people at CERN have had the good fortune of reaching results quicker than anticipated.
This isn't earth-shattering news or anything even unexpected, but it is still cause for celebration. Let us rejoice and then continue to push on towards new findings.
Re:Dr. Higgs himself said it best... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well it's not that much good luck really. CMS showed the expected significance of a SM Higgs boson for the full 5 channel combination to be ~6 sigma for 125 GeV. So seeing 4.9 sigma is actually a downward fluctuation (or in other words unlucky) or it's not Higgs.
Also, it's odd to see how much worse ATLAS was. They got 10% more statistics, yet see about the same significance as CMS. They also presented only 2 channels (true, the most sensitive ones) and didn't even attempt to fit the mass of the new particle (while CMS gave 125.3 +- 0.6 GeV, a precision of 0.5%!!!) nor did they look at the other supporting channels that could indicate if this is SM Higgs or some other particle. CMS as an example sees some tension in the 2tau final state where there is actually a downward fluctuation and almost exclusion of SM Higgs. CMS also showed first fits of couplings to fermions and bosons and that was very interesting result. ATLAS just claimed the 5 sigma and approximate mass. Really expected more of them...
Re:Dr. Higgs himself said it best... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm in CMS and we pretty much released all the details now at the seminar. If ATLAS held back until publication, then either they didn't manage to get it approved or they cut corners and didn't feel presenting the results right now yet. In any case it's CMS that showed most thorough investigation here. Though I can understand delaying the lower priority channels until some time this/next week I don't understand why they didn't provide a mass fit at todays seminar which was to be a discovery seminar (or they didn't expect CMS to have 5 sigma).
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... (or they didn't expect CMS to have 5 sigma).
Couldn't one of you CMS guys pick up the phone, dial extension #28527 and say "Yeah, we have 5 sigma." before the event?
Re:Dr. Higgs himself said it best... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Dr. Higgs himself said it best... (Score:4, Funny)
This is an achievement in experimental methodology.
In other words, this is Leonard making Sheldon's head explode.
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No. Science is a method to gain knowledge about the world. Of course science can go away, as soon as nobody practices it any more.
A good introducton to the Higgs mechanism (Score:5, Informative)
God upstairs.... (Score:2)
Phew.. that was close !!!
Goddamn upstairs (Score:3)
Technically, it was known as the "Goddamn particle". Someone, unfortunately, dropped the "damn" part, and the whole "god particle" nonsense exploded from there.
(No, I'm not joking, though I may be oversimplifying a little.)
Was the mass .1313131313... ? (Score:4, Funny)
Glad to see we may not be a Type 13 planet [tvtropes.org] after all...
Fake! (Score:3, Funny)
Obviously this is a grand conspiracy by the Europeans to distract us from what really matters today - blowing shit up! If they really wanted to celebrate the Fourth, they would have blown up CERN.
Worth the waking hours (Score:5, Interesting)
And let it now please NOT be a standard-model Higgs boson, but something a little more intriguing!
Re:Worth the waking hours (Score:4, Informative)
Did you see this character there with you (assuming you're not Jester posting on /.):
http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2012/07/h-day-live.html [blogspot.com]
My favorite line from the onsite report "10:46 Standing ovations, screams and shouts, the audience throwing bras and underwear at the stage."
Personally I like this image:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Cmf9NdNvpWw/T_Pm8cpuljI/AAAAAAAAAww/LF-1GXkBNfM/s320/godparticle.jpg [blogspot.com]
Great (Score:5, Funny)
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From The Telegraph (Score:5, Funny)
Possibly something else (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/w0tty/higgs_boson_confirmed_at_5sigma_standard/c599ijb [reddit.com]
Actually, we observed a new state at 125 GeV and it seems consistent with a Standard Model Higgs boson. We have NOT discovered the SM Higgs boson because we simply haven't confirmed that this new particle is the SM Higgs because we're only looking at mass itself. It could be something else with a mass of 125 GeV. To actually claim it is the SM Higgs, we need to confirm that it has spin 0, the right coupling ratios, etc. And that's what I'm working on right now. But it is very exciting because we have discovered new physics. Source: Working at CMS
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At least this is honest, when the popular press is stating emphatically in its headlines that we 'found the God particle'...
The truth is, we found a dog in the street that may, or may not, belong to Mr Higgs. All we know at this point is it's just a dog.
Admittedly, it's a brand new particle: that's always exciting. If it's not the Higgs, then it'd be something entirely new and exciting.
Particle That Looks Like the Higgs Boson (Score:5, Funny)
Patent applied for (Score:5, Funny)
Already Apple have patented the new particle, on the basis that it gives the iPad mass so they must have invented it.
So... Now what? (Score:5, Interesting)
But honestly? I would have preferred we didn't find it. However deep we look, the universe appears to fit the standard model flawlessly, just a matter of adding more decimal places to our store of knowledge. So, we found it, the standard model prevails yet again - Where does that leave gravity and QCD? What do we look for now?
Or perhaps more to the point, does finding the Higgs, that everyone fully expected to find roughly where they found it, really answer anything? At the risk of sounding like I would ascribe some sense of agency to the question (I do not mean to - consider me an agnostic in the strictest epistemological sense), this just barely answers the "what"; Yet with billions of dollars and millions of man-hours and the highest tech known to Man, we haven't even come close to answering the "why". We have a handful of nice tidy self-contained islands that make up the fabric of the universe, with no better idea of why they exist or how they interact (in the mechanism sense, not the phenomenal sense) than we did a decade and many billions of dollars ago.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_problem
So except for measuring all the particles' properties, which especially in case of the self-coupling will take many years, we will have to find an answer to the hierarchy problem. Hopefully that can come in the form of new physics, which is likely to also influence the Higgs boson properties like production and decay rate
Obligatory TBBT reference (Score:3)
Dr. Sheldon Cooper will be happy to hear about this.
Big fleas have little fleas... (Score:3)
The Higgs Boson has a probable mass of around 126 GeV.
So what gives the Higgs Boson mass?
Higgs bosom (Score:4, Funny)
I've been trying to get a peek at Cindy Higgs' bosom since high school.
explanatory update please? (Score:3)
Re:explanatory update please? (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, this is going to be pretty rough, but here it goes:
The Standard Model describes all the "point particles" which can't be subdivided. Each of these particles has a few constant parameters like electric charge, color charge, mass, and spin. Electrons are one of them (-1e charge, 0.51MeV mass, spin 1/2) as are neutrinos (0 charge, some...mass, spin 1/2) and quarks (+2/3 or -1/3 charge, a few different masses, spin 1/2). Quarks come together in groups of 2 or 3 to build particles like protons and neutrons (and a whole bunch more). These are what you'd consider matter (Fermions). There are also particles that serve as "force carriers" - all the fundamental forces like electromagnetism and the nuclear forces can be thought of as exchanges of these other particles. They have integer spin, and we call them Bosons. The photon for instance represents the electric field (it's massless), the W and Z bosons represent the weak nuclear force (they have mass), and Gluons represent the strong nuclear force (they have color charge, like quarks).
The problem is that gravity isn't really mentioned anywhere in here, and unlike all the other particle parameters, "mass" seems pretty arbitrary. It's not a nice round number, so there has to be something else there behind the scenes. The solution to this is that we think there's another "field", which we call the Higgs field, and another force-carrying particle called the Higgs Boson. In the same way that particles with charge can interchange photons to "feel" the electric field, particles with mass can exchange Higgs bosons to "feel" the Higgs field. Particles that interact that way essentially tie up a bunch of energy in that reaction, and that extra bottled up energy is what we experience as mass. So the degree to which particles couple to the higgs field (you could think of it as their "mass charge" parameter) determines how much mass they have. And people way smarter than you and me have found equations that do, in fact, predict the right masses for various particles when you crunch the numbers.
The problem with finding bosons is that they're really just intermediary particles - photons are obvious enough only because they travel at the speed of light. Bosons with mass go much slower, and wind up decaying or interacting before we can directly observe them. So this find by the LHC is *indirect* evidence of the Higgs, based on how much energy they're missing from various collision interactions. But it matches the predictions to a very high degree so far, so they're calling it good.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Quarks come together in groups of 2 or 3 to build particles like protons and neutrons (and a whole bunch more). These are what you'd consider matter (Fermions).
You probably meant hadrons (particles made of quarks), not fermions (particles with half-integer spin, in contrast to bosons with integer spin). In particular, there are both fermionic and bosonic hadrons.
There are also particles that serve as "force carriers" - all the fundamental forces like electromagnetism and the nuclear forces can be thought of as exchanges of these other particles. They have integer spin, and we call them Bosons.
All force carriers are bosons, but not all bosons are force carriers. Force carriers are also called gauge bosons, as they are bosonic excitations of gauge fields.
The problem with finding bosons is that they're really just intermediary particles - photons are obvious enough only because they travel at the speed of light. Bosons with mass go much slower, and wind up decaying or interacting before we can directly observe them. So this find by the LHC is *indirect* evidence of the Higgs, based on how much energy they're missing from various collision interactions. But it matches the predictions to a very high degree so far, so they're calling it good.
The problem isn't the bosonic nature of the particle, but rather its mass and strength of interaction with other particles, which affect the ene
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I'll give you a partial try. I think that is is too much to ask to say what these particles are "actually made of" -- that requires too much of the vagaries of human language. What the physicists do now is produce mathematical models which match the observations. That said, the Standard Model represents particles such as electrons and photons as excitations of a field. A one dimensional model is a jump rope. The jump rope is the field -- if you wiggle (excite) the jump rope you make bumps in it. These
Heavy boson yet long range? (Score:3)
Re:huh (Score:5, Informative)
Now we just need to solve gravity, dark matter, dark energy, unify quantum chromodynamics with relativity, and a ton of other stuff.
Party's not over, folks. :)
I suspect dark matter will be easiest. Wouldn't be surprised at all if the LHC solves that one. All you need to see is what looks like a clear violation of conservation of energy/momentum at a consistant, high energy in your results, and you've got evidence that something heavy that interacts weakly or not at all with normal matter is flying off in the opposite direction. That something would probably be dark matter.
The others... that's probably going to be a long, hard slog.
Re: (Score:3)
We're not talking about "describing", but "unifying" and "simplifying". We can describe mass and energy without the Higgs field.
Re:huh (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I found it last week. (Score:5, Funny)
The legendary Higgs Boson is in my pants, and it feels great!
Scientists also report the particle is much smaller than expected
Re:I found it last week. (Score:5, Funny)
It's also not a Hadron.
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That theory could _also_ say that the far-off land is the only land in that region when there are several other lands that are missed because we A) found the predicted far-off land and B) then assumed that the second prediction, that it was the only far-off land, was also true, and failed to look any further.
This is the mistake I fear CERN is going to make.
Re:"Discovers"? (Score:4, Informative)
This is the mistake I fear CERN is going to make.
All particle physics experiments have two aspects: they are designed with some very specific target in mind, and once that target is found or excluded they are then run for as long as humanly possible searching for new stuff, both by going to higher energies and making more precise measurements on things already known (different decay channels, etc.)
Sometimes--as in the case of the Kamiokande detector, which was originally aimed at proton decay--we repurpose the system for different particles entirely (solar neutrinos, say.)
So your "fear" is that the LHC teams will behave completely differently from every particle physics team ever anywhere. Good luck with that.