Higgs Range Narrowed; Hunt Enters Final Stage 80
gbrumfiel writes "For forty years, the Higgs boson has remained a theoretical construct, but by Christmas, scientists may have a pretty good idea of whether it's real or not. Nature News reports that a new analysis has further narrowed the Higgs range, and data gathered this autumn at the LHC should be enough to show a faint signal from a Higgs, if it's there. (Already one signal has disappeared earlier in the year.) Physicists hope to finish their analysis of the autumn data by the year's end, but even if they come up empty-handed it won't be the end of the story. The Higgs is commonly referred to as the particle that endows others with mass, but its real appeal is the ability to unify the weak nuclear force with electromagnetism. If there is no Higgs, some other mechanism for creating a unified 'electroweak' force should be found inside the LHC."
Higgs boson in stockings (Score:5, Funny)
Merry Christmas! We will all get Higgs bosons in our stockings. But I guess they have always been there, we just couldn't see them.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
You have weird Christmas stockings.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You serious Clark?
Re:Higgs boson in stockings (Score:4, Insightful)
No, I predict we will find nothing, and have to invent a new standard model. That would be more fun and more interesting.
Re: (Score:3)
Definitely, and as Occum's Razor suggests, probably. We have on the books now, apparently, neutrinos faster than light, a preponderance of theorized dark matter still MIA and many alternate dimensions/universes that cannot ever be proved/disproved.
Perhaps Wigner was wrong, are we creating maths to describe what we (want to)see, rather than explaining the fundamentals, after all?
Re: (Score:2)
Definitely more interesting...
...probably needing a new theory.
Re: (Score:3)
we already know that the observable universe is a very tiny fraction of the whole thing, on the order of 10^-26 or less. Any possibility of FTL travel by particles opens the possibility to expanding our observations beyond that realm, maybe to somewhere with different physics.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
If you do observe them, they're not really there.
FTFY
Re:Important stuff (Score:5, Funny)
What the hell is a bosone?
It unifies the pasta weak with the marinara field.
Re: (Score:3)
In the '80s we were freaked out about losing the bozone layer, don't you remember anything about that time period?
Re: (Score:1)
It's a contraction of "Boss One", aka 'The Big Boss', sort of like the Capo Di Tutti Capo.
Re: (Score:2)
A subatomic particle, like its companion, the fermione
Somehow related to the hermione I'm guessing? Ouch! That really hurt. I'm giving myself a time out for that one!
Fucking science, is there anything it can't do? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm still in awe every time I see any pictures of the LHC.
Re:higgs as real as santa (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah , fuck scientists! Those entitled pricks draped in lab coats haven't done shit* for us!
.
.
.
* Except for essentially wiping out polio, smallpox, and a host of other major diseases. And generally improving the quality of life not just for all Americans but people the world around. And discovering nuclear power. And providing insights into how our universe works so that we may better understand it. And making the end of hunger a political problem rather than a practical problem. And...
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah , fuck scientists! Those entitled pricks draped in lab coats haven't done shit* for us!
* Except for essentially wiping out polio, smallpox, and a host of other major diseases. And generally improving the quality of life not just for all Americans but people the world around. And discovering nuclear power. And providing insights into how our universe works so that we may better understand it. And making the end of hunger a political problem rather than a practical problem. And...
Excellent rant, it reminded me of this from Monty Python's "Life of Brian"
I salute you.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Particle physics blog (Score:5, Informative)
For those of you interested in LHC physics I would highly recommend this blog:
http://profmattstrassler.com/ [profmattstrassler.com]
As far as I can tell the author is an extremely well-respected physicist (disclaimer: I am a theoretical physicist but do not work on LHC physics) and I also find his blog very clear and I like the extra level of detail.
(The author also does not try to sell you his own favorite theory of everything, a thing I've seen happening a few times too many in the blogs out there.)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Strassler's blog is good stuff, with few enough comments that he has time to answer questions.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for that! It looks to be an awesome blog.
higgs vs santa, virtual reality test (Score:1)
Irony? (Score:1, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Not really. Christmas is 9 months after Easter, which is when Jesus died. In the olden days, important people were believed to have died on the same day they were born or conceived, so Jesus would have been conceived at Easter and born in December. Pagan rituals did intermix with Christmas, but it was not chosen because of pagan convenience.
Re: (Score:2)
It is unlikely that Jesus, if he existed, were born in the winter. See e.g. http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/jesus.asp [snopes.com] .
Re: (Score:2)
Of course not. The point, though, is that Jesus' birthday is not meant to coincide with pagan holiday.
Re: (Score:3)
Of course not. The point, though, is that Jesus' birthday is not meant to coincide with pagan holiday.
The linked Snopes article seems to claim otherwise when it says "The idea of celebrating the Nativity on December 25 was first suggested early in the fourth century CE, a clever move on the part of Church fathers who wished to eclipse the December 25 festivities of a rival pagan religion..."
http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/jesus.asp [snopes.com]
When did Snopes start obfuscating so that it was difficult to copy text from their pages or is something screwy with my system?
Re:Irony? (Score:4)
Christmas is when Christ's birth is celebrated, not when it happened.
Re: (Score:3)
If it was _that_ important don't you think he would of at least mentioned it, instead of explicitly saying to celebrate his death?
Electroweak is old news (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Electromagnetism and weak nuclear force have a solid unification theory and supporting experiments since the 70's (and a few nobel prizes as back as '79 at least). Higgs boson is involved in electroweak symmetry breaking, and possibly unification of electroweak with the strong force.
Umm, without a mechanism for symmetry breaking, the current model for electroweak unification doesn't work (the Higgs is ultimately supposed to be responsible for the difference in mass between the photon (massless) and the W and Z particles (massive). The unification of the strong force with the electroweak force is the subject of grand unified theories (GUTs), and has nothing whatsoever to do with the Higgs boson. Proton decay, for instance, would be a signature for a GUT.
What is "real" ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Serious question here: What does it mean to say that Higgs bosons are "real" ?
Physicists often go out of their way to point out that theory is under-determined by data. If you have two theories that account for all our data, but one theory contains a Higgs bosons and the other theory does not, do we still say that Higgs bosons are "real"?
Or, does saying they're "real" assume some standard model of physics as the context for the statement?
Re:What is "real" ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Real in this case means independently measurable and not just a construct to compensate for the difference between the mathematical model and the data.
If it is real the model works, if it isn't real the model only works in certain circumstances.
The end goal is to find a model that can explain the universe without dark matter made out of handwaveium and explains why neutrinos shows up too early and stuff like that.
When the model works without footnotes that says "Only applies to macroscopic numbers" and stuff like that then whatever it descirbes can be called "real enough"
Re:What is "real" ? (Score:4, Insightful)
No. They said "hmmmm this could be explained by real thing with the following properties...". Followed by "let's see if we can find such a thing".
The point of these experiments is precisely to find out whether it's real because so far nobody knows for sure. it's looking more and more likely that the answer is "no".
Re: (Score:1)
What, then, are the consequences of the Higgs being real? If a single particle amid a group of particles holds all of the mass of that group of other particles, what happens to the other particles when the Higgs is pulled out? Would the other particles just start flying off at the speed of light?
Re: (Score:2)
There's no particular reason to think you can do that though.
The notion is that the Higgs field is pervasive throughout the universe, and that all other matter in moving through the field interacts with some amount of it and thus acquire mass (neatly explaining why things acquire mass when they move).
The Higgs particle is the "real" quantization of the field - most of the time it merely interacts with matter in the form of virtual Higgs-bosons, much like how the electric field interacts with virtual photons
Re: (Score:1)
I have submitted this as a question to "ask Slashdot" but my question is the following: Is the superluminal neutrino considered to be compatible with information theory? And if it is, why exactly would it be incompatible with Einstein? I have uploaded the draft of my analysis on the topic to http://relevancetheory.blogspot.com/2011/11/general-theory-of-relevance.html [blogspot.com] and http://www.scribd.com/doc/73219743/The-General-Theory-of-Relevance-and-Reliability [scribd.com] and would love all help verifying the argument. In esse
Re: (Score:2)
This is what happens when people forget that computer science isn't real science and try to mix the two (and I say this as someone who is a computer scientist). Either that, or you're trolling, in which case, I suggest you put the clearly enormous effort you've spent trolling to better use.
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you for your answer! I think you have a very valid point and I want to make that clear right away.
I do not intend to troll, but I realize it comes off like that every time I fail to clearly point out exactly the disclaimer you do now - this is in the end only supposed to be a computer science model - and of course I might be failing at that too which is what I would like to ask a real computer scientist such as yourself about!
Any connection between a strict information theoretical model and real physi
Re:What is "real" ? (Score:5, Informative)
As real as the neutrino. The neutrino was a prediction based on a model of physics at the time and remained theoretical for thirty years until an experiment confirmed their existence. Like the Higgs, it was thought to be nearly impossible to experimentally verify for a very long time. And when it was observed, it was not observed directly, but through the behavior of particles it interacted with. The interacting particles, in order to behave as they did, must have interacted with something that had the precise qualities ascribed to the neutrino. Therefore, a neutrino must have interacted with them. Therefore, neutrinos exist.
Now we have hot and cold running neutrinos and can use them to probe all sorts of interesting things. But we have still not directly observed them in a detector, because, by their nature, they don't show up. But we know that when we see particles behaving as if they interacted with a near massless, half spin object interacting weakly, we call it a neutrino and move on.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Serious question here: What does it mean to say that Higgs bosons are "real" ?
Physicists often go out of their way to point out that theory is under-determined by data. If you have two theories that account for all our data, but one theory contains a Higgs bosons and the other theory does not, do we still say that Higgs bosons are "real"?
Or, does saying they're "real" assume some standard model of physics as the context for the statement?
Reality, in science, is not a useful label to use. A more useful term would be "observable," or "measurable." Science provides explanations about phenomena we observe; the theories we construct about observable/measurable phenomena are the explanations. And because we use the purely abstract tools of mathematics to articulate them, theories can have no connection with the phenomena they describe. The debate over the ontological status of any of the theoretical constructs deployed in science belongs in
They'll Smash An Atom (Score:3)
This is it! (Score:1, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
^
|
|
It's a joke, people! Laugh!
Ever heard of Zefram Cochrane?
Re: (Score:2)
Damn people, hand in your geek cards. Does no one recognize a dilithium crystal when they see one?
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of theories will be going down soon (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I think it's important to realize that our scientific models are really models. Is the universe *really* like our models? Personally (and I am not a physicist) I think it's unlikely. I think it is much more likely that there are many possibilities that can map on to our observations. We use the models that are most useful to us. Some people may choose to believe that the models themselves are reality, but that's just another religion IMHO.
As far as our mathematical models make predictions and those pre
Re: (Score:2)
Except there was nothing wrong with the Ptolemaic system - up until it did not match observations.
If the best resolution of your instrumentation is observing just the apparent passage of the sun from a fixed point on Earth, then it would be reasonable to conclude the sun in fact is travelling around the Earth. With only 2 reference points, you can't conclude anything else.
You could propose that the sun in fact is travelling around the Earth, but without additional measurement there's no way to establish thi
Another blog worth following (Score:5, Informative)
US LHC Blog [quantumdiaries.org]
I like this very much. Lots of physics explained for us mere mortals (who still have some scientific background).
Bet they find ... (Score:1)