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.
But we know the Standard Model is incomplete (Score:4, Interesting)
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finding out our ideas are completely wrong isn't "interesting", it's a setback.
considering it's a complex set of ideas that potentially describe how the entire universe and everything in it works, isn't "incomplete" or "unfinished" is about the best we can shoot for at this point
Re:But we know the Standard Model is incomplete (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientific setbacks is what allow us to advance scientifically.
Re:But we know the Standard Model is incomplete (Score:5, Interesting)
But we know we aren't right. We cannot correct our flawed models of the natural world until we find the flaws in them. We know that our models are wrong, but we don't know why. The whole point of building equipment like this is to find out where our models break down so that we can build better models. If we spend billions of dollars only to learn that we were right (up to the resolution of the instrument), then we wasted billions of dollars and need to build a better instrument.
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wasted billions of dollars and need to build a better instrument. ...and that wasn't the point?
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.
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wasted billions of dollars and need to build a better instrument. ...and that wasn't the point?
It's perfectly clear you've made your mind up that that is the point; so why would anyone waste their time attempting to convince you otherwise? That time would be better spent educating someone who hasn't decided they already know everything worth knowing.
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Everyone has decided that the Standard model is mostly correct
So the religion of the standard model continues and the added apostle gets accepted into the religion.
The Standard Model has so far withstood most attempts to prove it wrong, so it is tentatively accepted. There was no 'decision'. It's obvious that you disagree with it for your own 'reasons' - but rather than attempt to criticise it with logic and evidence, you declare that it is a religion. LOL.
Basically, you aren't brave enough to argue honestly, and would rather smear shit around. The Standard Model might well give way to a different paradigm (it doesn't incorporate gravity for example), but if it does,
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If we spend billions of dollars only to learn that we were right (up to the resolution of the instrument), then we wasted billions of dollars
Nonsense. We can't move forward unless the experiment supports the theory. Otherwise you're not following the scientific method.
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We know the theory has flaws. If we don't find the flaws, we can't fix the theory. We are NOT in the situation where we think our theory perfectly describes the physical world and are just looking for proof - we know it breaks down. We just don't know why.
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Re:But we know the Standard Model is incomplete (Score:4, Informative)
But we know we aren't right. We cannot correct our flawed models of the natural world until we find the flaws in them.
Well, we know on principle that all scietific theories are flawed; that's why it is cience, not religion. The problem is that we have two theories that have, so far, checked out in every detail, but which appear to be fundamentally incompatible. And, even worse, we have not been able to find any discrepancy between the two, that is small enough to guide our intuition; all the data that point to something being wrong, are somehow wildly off.
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....pretty sure being right allows us to advance more quickly
Yeah, and so?
Are you trying to be obtuse?
The attitude of "We will not try anything until we are sure we have the right thing to study" would be a bigger blow to science than a thousand different people all trying the wrong thing.
The idea of it being more interesting if it didn't match our model, would indicate that there is an even more complex system out there that can be interacted with. We could possibly do things like find a new dimension we could travel instead of it just being a theory, in the long te
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You're an engineer, not a scientist.
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> pretty sure being right allows us to advance more quickly
Definitely not. The exact opposite is much closer to the truth.
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> pretty sure being right allows us to advance more quickly
Definitely not. The exact opposite is much closer to the truth.
The reason why something like this might be true is related to the Confirmation Bias logical fallacy. Quick classic example:
Take the series of numbers: 2,4,6,8
Figure out what the rules for the series are. If you give me a guess, I'll tell you if it is in the series or not.
So you guess 10.
I say yes.
Then you guess 12.
I say yes.
Yippie, you think. I've figured it out. I'll make one more guess to be sure: How about 14?
Yes.
Ok, you say, the rule is all the numbers are even.
Nope. The rule is the numbers are
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finding out our ideas are completely wrong isn't "interesting", it's a setback.
Not when all our ideas lead to dead-ends in terms of new effects to exploit.
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He'd say you were holding it wrong.
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:5, Informative)
> the Hiiggs Boson either doesn't exists or has different properties than the Standard Model predicts
Well he got his wish, in a way.
The SM doesn't predict any particular mass for the Higgs. It doesn't predict masses at all, except in the way that it defines relative masses, sort of. So if the mass of particle A is 1 then B has to be at least 2 for the theory to work, but it doesn't say that A has to be 1, and if it's 0.5 then B can be 1. A number of new theories do predict masses directly, or have relative masses like the SM, but require those relative masses to be different.
Right now the entire field is basically up in the air over how to continue development, whether that be supersymmetry or multiple dimensions. They both require different Higgs mass, one around (going completely on memory here) 114 GeV and the other a little less than 140.
Atlas and CMS both put the mass around 125, which means both are wrong. This is a good thing, because both systems stink.
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finding out our ideas are completely wrong isn't "interesting", it's a setback.
considering it's a complex set of ideas that potentially describe how the entire universe and everything in it works, isn't "incomplete" or "unfinished" is about the best we can shoot for at this point
I'll just leave this Asimov quote here:
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Finding out the truth is never a setback in science. It is always an accomplishment. While it may sometimes feel like a setback to find out you were wrong, the real setback would have been heading down the wrong path longer than necessary. Think of the lost opportunity cost in potential discoveries that could have been made sooner with a more accurate picture of the world.
QUCK!!! (Score:1)
Re:QUCK!!! (Score:4, Funny)
naw, sorry, we had to spend that 50B on a mobile social app that lets you listen
to the sounds of your friends farts
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Texas passed [scientificamerican.com] on that, thank you.
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np, I saw it. :)
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Yea FermiLab! (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife is a staff physicist at Fermi National Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. They collected so many exabytes of data from the Tevatron before it was shut down and superseded by the LHC at Cern, that physicists will be spending many more years analyzing the data. Many PhD theses and major discoveries will likely come out of that mass of data. The work that is going on at Fermi now will likely be similarly important. I can only think of one other neutrino experiment that can duplicate (maybe) what they are doing at FermiLab now. For more really interesting information about what they are doing there, go to www.fnal.gov.
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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.
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No, he's being clever and helpful: he doesn't want American birds to know where the LHC is so they can't go there and drop bread on it.
Re: A different atom smasher (Score:2, Informative)
The submitter merely quoted text from the article. They didn't change anything to slight the LHC.
Re:A different atom smasher (Score:5, Informative)
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.
While EU countries contributed the bulk of the resources, personnel, and location of course, the US also contributed over half a billion dollars of the estimated $6.4 billion (€4.6 billion) total cost, technical and scientific contributions, and more than a few personnel. It was and still is a massive international effort, with scientists and engineers from 100 different countries contributing.
As a US citizen, I was actually quite proud of *humanity* for creating such an amazing device, all for the purpose of advancing our scientific understanding. What's there to be envious of? I think it's fantastic. No one but you seems intent on turning it into an international pissing match.
Re:A different atom smasher (Score:4, Informative)
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"We spent as much on LHC as we spend on 1/5 of a submarine. In other words, the LHC costs about 2.5 attack submarines;"
...as long as we define 2.5 as being the same as 1/5.
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"We spent as much on LHC as we spend on 1/5 of a submarine. In other words, the LHC costs about 2.5 attack submarines;"
...as long as we define 2.5 as being the same as 1/5.
...or "we" (the U.S.) paid for a relatively small fraction of the total cost of the LHC.
Re: A different atom smasher (Score:2)
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And it's called the Large Hadron Collider, not the "European Large Hadron Collider". A lot of countries outside of Europe helped build it.
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Skepticism in the face of evidence is called 'denialism'. The Standard Model is hardly a "new theory". Science works by testing hypotheses and gathering evidence.
To say the physicists are being pre-mature about their conclusion is to show your ignorance.
Fermilab Music Video! (Score:2)
Don't forget that Fermilab has a music video, Particle Business! https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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