Ten Years After the Higgs, Physicists Face the Nightmare of Finding Nothing Else (science.org) 90
A decade ago, particle physicists thrilled the world. On 4 July 2012, 6000 researchers working with the world's biggest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, announced they had discovered the Higgs boson, a massive, fleeting particle key to their abstruse explanation of how other fundamental particles get their mass. The discovery fulfilled a 45-year-old prediction, completed a theory called the standard model, and thrust physicists into the spotlight. Then came a long hangover. From a report: Before the 27-kilometer-long ring-shaped LHC started to take data in 2010, physicists fretted that it might produce the Higgs and nothing else, leaving no clue to what lies beyond the standard model. So far, that nightmare scenario is coming true. "It's a bit disappointing," allows Barry Barish, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology. "I thought we would discover supersymmetry," the leading extension of the standard model.
It's too early to despair, many physicists say. After 3 years of upgrades, the LHC is now powering up for the third of five planned runs, and some new particle could emerge in the billions of proton-proton collisions it will produce every second. In fact, the LHC should run for another 16 years, and with further upgrades should collect 16 times as much data as it already has. All those data could reveal subtle signs of novel particles and phenomena. Still, some researchers say the writing is on the wall for collider physics. "If they don't find anything, this field is dead," says Juan Collar, a physicist at the University of Chicago who hunts dark matter in smaller experiments. John Ellis, a theorist at King's College London, says hopes of a sudden breakthrough have given way to the prospect of a long, uncertain grind toward discovery. "It's going to be like pulling teeth, not like teeth falling out."
It's too early to despair, many physicists say. After 3 years of upgrades, the LHC is now powering up for the third of five planned runs, and some new particle could emerge in the billions of proton-proton collisions it will produce every second. In fact, the LHC should run for another 16 years, and with further upgrades should collect 16 times as much data as it already has. All those data could reveal subtle signs of novel particles and phenomena. Still, some researchers say the writing is on the wall for collider physics. "If they don't find anything, this field is dead," says Juan Collar, a physicist at the University of Chicago who hunts dark matter in smaller experiments. John Ellis, a theorist at King's College London, says hopes of a sudden breakthrough have given way to the prospect of a long, uncertain grind toward discovery. "It's going to be like pulling teeth, not like teeth falling out."
Spin and counter-spin (Score:5, Interesting)
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In conjunction with Slashdot, LHC discovered the Dupitron Particle.
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I forgot to link to prior: https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
Re:Spin and counter-spin (Score:5, Funny)
It's in a quantum superposed state: Schrödinger's headline.
Quantum Spam (Score:1)
So clicking may give you live spam or stale spam, and you can't know until you click.
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I doubt that the physicists involved ride the emotional roller coaster described by science headlines.
Not opposites, complimentary (Score:3)
So interesting to see this headline a day after its polar opposite
Those are in no way polar opposites. Those of us in particle physics all hope for new discoveries at the LHC - even those of us who have moved on to even higher energies with other [wisc.edu] experiments [pacific-neutrino.org]. However, we also have to face the real possibility that the LHC will not see find anything.
This is because we have no control over how nature works, so all we can do is hope the solutions to the things we do not understand are within reach of the experiments we have the technology and funding to construct. It's a
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We have no control over how nature works, but we have control over what modes of questioning we have nature exposed to. I imagine we will keep changing those and so keep discovering new things till the end of time.
Hope is not a strategy (Score:1)
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Every crap has to be emotionalized to an extreme degree. It is just pathetic. The actual people doing the work are pretty calm about things, the media is hysteric.
Other dimensions (Score:2)
The LHC could look for signs of other dimensions. Change the type of particles they use, add in some rotating laser beams, and you'll be surprised at what is found.
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Space Sharks
Already done! (Score:2)
The LHC could look for signs of other dimensions.
Ironically they already did this: it's call Large Extra-dimenstions [wikipedia.org] and as the article suggests they found nothing.
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They didn't have rotating laser beams though. Or zinc.
Perversity of universe (Score:1, Troll)
There is in fact no limit to new particles. The only limit is the amount of energy you can put into colliding the known ones with each other. This quest will never end. Not, at least, until particle physicists run out of other people's money.
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There is in fact no limit to new particles. The only limit is the amount of energy you can put into colliding the known ones with each other.
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False, the universe has means to collide particles with far more energies than humans have produced, and we've detected some of the composite particles produced. And then there is the matter of particles formed soon after big bang, also might be detected by humans.
There are experiments ongoing to detect particles not made by human colliders.
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Anti-gravity houses? Teleportation? Telepathy? Time traveling?
When we discovered atoms and electrons and periodic table, it made possible to predict chemistry. It made possible to turn toilet paper into alcohol or cotton wool into cotton candy. It was no longer (only) trial and error. If you have proper understanding of something, you can think all kind of neat tricks with it.
--
“With great power comes great electricity bill.” – Unknown
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Personally, I think Pink Unicorns, Tall Midgets, an Extra Moon for the Earth, and Vacations to the Sun are possible. Your list is not realistic.
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The ER=EPR conjecture would make teleportation an unnecessary and dangerous approach. Simply use the fact that entanglement constitutes a wormhole to create a transportation network to get near to where you want to be.
Anti-Dentistry and Anti-Science! (Score:2)
From The Submission:
John Ellis, a theorist at King's College London, says hopes of a sudden breakthrough have given way to the prospect of a long, uncertain grind toward discovery. "It's going to be like pulling teeth, not like teeth falling out."
Hang on, sudden breakthroughs in science is akin to teeth falling out?!?!?!
And even pulling teeth at least gets you results, hopefully not "long, uncertain grind toward discovery".
His dental allusions are both inherently wrong and seem to be both anti-dentistry as
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A lot of breakthroughs have boom-and-bust cycles. AI has been the same way. More powerful CPU's eventually gave researchers more options. Often it takes other technology to catch up before the next level can be reached. Solid-state electronics was explored early in the last century with great lab results, but manufacturing technology was not reliable enough to make mass production practical. When manufacturing caught up, solid-state became the dominant form of electronics.
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Netflix thought it was a good idea to give the Game of Thrones writers a bunch of money to turn it into a TV show.
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Pretty sure the cancelation announcement preceded the show release in this case.
Or at least should have. Anybody paying any of the creative team from Game of Thrones for ANYTHING after that train wreck needs their head examined.
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Maybe that's why the astroturfing is so enthusiastic.
Research the negativity of early posters? (Score:2)
Wondering why so many early posters are so negative. You'd think they'd like the science that gave them their fancy smartphones and computers?
But you remember what Einstein is supposed to have said about infinity...
Re:Research the negativity of early posters? (Score:4, Informative)
Please explain how theoretical sub-atomic particles gave us smartphones and computers.
Understanding the electron and quantum effects are vitally important to the design of smartphones and computers.
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Until Quantum Physics, the behavior of electrons in their atomic orbits was very poorly understood. Only the understanding that it provided made semiconductors and transistors possible.
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Re:Research the negativity of early posters? (Score:5, Informative)
The efforts of scientists to verify and test the predictions of the theoretical sciences have, for many decades, driven the forefront of the development of engineering and computing.
The LHC is not just a bank of klystrons and superconducting magnets. It's also one of the most powerful real-time data acquisition systems in the world, and has driven development on this front. It has driven development of radiation-resistant ICs that run the satellites that power your glowing rectangle. It has one of the largest single storage engines and clusters in the world. The algorithms, hardware and software, used to sort through the tidal waves of data it generates aren't just for searching through particle physics datasets. Part of the reason Webb took so long is because they had to literally create entire new industries in order to build the mirror. If it hadn't been for NASA doing a vast amount of rocketry research and publishing their designs and data, most of today's private launch companies would have never gotten past the Goddard stage.
The list goes on and on... If you don't understand how science drives the frontiers of engineering, just sit down and enjoy the fruits of the galaxy brains' work.
Viagra Particle. (Score:2)
They're going to have to look for a Viagra Particle so their Hardon Collider can keep working.
(Obviously tongue in cheek, this whole article is a great example of a writer not understanding even one thing about what a particle accelerator does)
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"Back when people understood that...yada..." They were wrong and so are you.
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Negative result is a result as well (Score:2)
Just modify it ... (Score:2)
[ They should really hyphenate the name: Large-Hadron Collider, or Large Hadron-Collider ... ]
Truncated headline misleading (Score:1)
Good work, you must be so proud of your jobs.
Think about this (Score:2)
Re: Think about this (Score:2)
Limits of technology (Score:5, Interesting)
Stephen Hawking said that figuring out whether electrons and quarks were point particles or had structure, i.e., where hadrons, would require an accelerator the size of the solar system.
He wasn't confident the machine would be built in his lifetime.
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Well, he got that much right anyway.
Ever since I started watching "The Big Bang" (reruns of course), I've doubted more and more that there was anything to all this mess. A lot of my doubt is surely due to my ignorance (not a single symbol or formula on all those white boards) has ever made a lick of sense to me). But I find it hard to believe that someone can come up with a formula (esp. a whole white- or black-board full), and then actually _build_ hardware from those ideas (if indeed ideas they are).
But
What they really need (Score:2)
Superconducting super-colliding fusion quantum computer.
With that, they can discover the fundamental particle of free energy that unifies scams and encryption. In theory, it will produce an infinite number of research grants at every point in the Universe and mine all the remaining Bitcoin.
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Come to think of it, this all reminds me of stuff I read back in the 80s about Newman's energy machine. [wikipedia.org]. The inventor claimed that it was not a PMM, but was converting matter to energy via an undiscovered fundamental particle. IIRC, the author of the article dubbed that particle "the puton".
So then they should to the obvious (Score:2)
Play "Ten Years After"
The song obviously: I'm going home.
false premise of article (Score:3)
Already there are known problems with Standard Model and experiments are exploring them, and CERN will be a part of them.
Muon magnetic moment isn't the predicted value.
W boson is too heavy.
Neutrinos have mass, standard model says they shouldn't.
Matter / Antimatter asymmetry shouldn't exist. It does, and so we exist!
Dark matter, dark energy, gravity... Standard Model has nothing for these.
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The remaining candidates require so much energy that not even the Future Circular Collider can reach them.
Time Tyrants (Score:2)
Time lords got ALGORE elected VP so that the SSC would be killed in favor of the ISS and Climate Change research. Their aim was to keep our timeline primitive. They didn't want our timeline developing psychic dogs or discovering the secrets of Time Travel.
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False statement, LHC will be exploring the first two things I listed.
Another ongoing experiment is measuring gravitational field effect on antimatter.
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besides the first two, LHC also working on neutrino mass and oscillations for that matter.
Nonsense to say LHC can't work on good chunk of the list I made
I hate the press... sometimes... (Score:3)
They just restarted this thing after upgrading the bejesus out of it.
Isn't it running at 14 TeV now? Can't we wait to call it a failure until after at some research has been done with it?
Literally no research has been done at the higher energy level.
Just start operating from the premise (Score:1)
That none of what theyâ(TM)ve discovered actually exists in the first place. That should give them new things to try and come up with.
It's a real problem. The standard model is broken (Score:2)
The standard model is broken, but there isn't a good idea of what to replace it with. I'm not really sure that a fancier particle smasher is the right approach, but this doesn't mean I've got a better idea.
Gravity just doesn't fit right. SOMETHING is wrong. But all the experiments keep saying "Yup, the standard model predicts just exactly this.". Except how do you explain dark energy, dark matter, etc.? About 90% of the universe.
And there's a real chance that the explanation requires an atom smasher th
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IIUC, my opinions are dead center in the middle of average for physicists. No guarantees I'm correct about that, but they aren't outrageous. Admittedly my opinions are based on pop science, but it's pop *science*, not flights of fancy.
Negative Results Are Valid Science Also (Score:3)
If no new physics ever shows up at the LHC then this will tell physicists that there is no new physics, no new particles to be found within the accessible energy space of colliders that we can build at present.
This is a valuable finding, if it proves to be the case, and we could not know this without trying.
Not exciting I know, but knowing there is nothing in a particular search space is important knowledge.
Remember the Anti-Matter debate (Score:1)
After attending multiple LHC lectures this month (Score:2)
The Standard Model
Wow... if you want to smack the poster
The Update Hasn't Gone Live Yet (Score:1)
Big Science goes out of its way to avoid discovery (Score:2)
Old Nightmare (Score:2)
Maybe one day, but I don't reckon that is today..
We need a supercollider. (Score:3)
Build a proper 100-mile-diameter supercollider with the same luminosity as the LHC will now have, but the higher energy that you can achieve by having gentler curvature. That's about the upper limit you can build on Earth realistically.
Space, though, is an even better accelerator. Stick satellites in space that look for exotic particles resulting from energies we can't achieve on Earth.
If neither turns up anything, THEN particle physics is dead.