Years After Shutting Down, Tevatron Reveals Properties of Higgs Boson 73
sciencehabit writes: A U.S. atom smasher has made an important scientific contribution 3.5 years after it shut down. Scientists are reporting that the Tevatron collider in Batavia, Illinois, has provided new details about the nature of the famed Higgs boson — the particle that's key to physicists' explanation of how other fundamental particles get their mass and the piece in a theory called the standard model. The new result bolsters the case that the Higgs, which was discovered at a different atom smasher, exactly fits the standard model predictions.
Re:But we know the Standard Model is incomplete (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientific setbacks is what allow us to advance scientifically.
they nailed down its mass: 125 giga-electron volts (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't that still too high of an energy level for string theory to be pursued any longer?
A different atom smasher (Score:3, Insightful)
The submitter funnily avoids naming the largest and most complex instrument ever built by man, the European Large Hadron Collider, by casually downplaying and referring to it as "a different atom smasher". Methinks the submitter is an envious American.
Re:But we know the Standard Model is incomplete (Score:5, Insightful)
So the results are disappointing in a way, as the most boring of all alternative explanations seems to be true.
Re:But we know the Standard Model is incomplete (Score:4, Insightful)
Given the fact that usually we develop a truckload of new technology, manufacturing and engineering processes and materials, and sometimes even math, in the process of building the "useless" machine, sort of.
And you actually use these things for other experiments than the main one it was built for, after all. Often to extremely good results.
It is money well spent. Better spent than the shitload of money the military likes to give to the defense contractors, for sure.