back to article God particles breeding like bosons

US researchers have suggested that the elusive God particle - the Higgs boson - may actually be no less than a quintet of divine, and as yet elusive, components of the universe. The Standard Model. Source: AAAS The theoretical Higgs boson is required to give mass to the 16 other particles described by the Standard Model (see …

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  1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    Copying programmers ?

    Particle physicists seem to be copying an idea from programmers. Whereas programmers say:

    "There is no problem in computer science which cannot be solved by one more level of indirection"

    Physicists seem to be saying:

    "There is no problem in particle physics that cannot be solved by one more type of particle"

    1. Steve the Cynic

      Levels of indirection

      Hah! I've got a problem that can't be solved by adding levels of indirection.

      ==>> The code is too big to fit into the ROM.

      Solve that by *adding* levels of indirection!

      1. Rob-Ward
        Pirate

        You don't need more indirection you need a better programmer...

        Sorry had to be done :-)

      2. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
        Go

        Easy.

        Make the existing ROM a look-up table to routines stored in ROM on an expansion board.

        My invoice is in the post.

        GJC

        1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
          Coat

          Or...

          ...use a bigger ROM

          After all 640K should be enough....

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Coat

        Microcode / Compression

        Might not be possible in all circumstances, but it is, or it was back in the heady days I used to sit in lecture theatres wondering why I wasn't down the pub, a known technique to squeeze the most amount of instructions into a very limited space on a microprocessor, and can also be applied to ROM design.

        You write your program with a minimal instruction set that takes up bits rather than bytes - the microcode, and the rest of the space (assuming you've plenty left) to write the 'interpreter' in full size machine instructions that runs the microcode. Hey presto, one level of indirection.

        ... or perhaps you've done that already, in which case, I'll get me coat.

        1. oliver Stieber

          huffman

          don't forget to make sure that microcode is huffman compressed first.

          the interpreter can have the decompression hard wired in so no overhead and microcode is microcoded.

          you could possibly use a runlength type huffman code to create a type of microcode in the first place.

          if you write your original assembler or whatever using consistent patterns for various multi-code operations then you should have lots of repeating 'blocks' of instructions that can be turned into 1 micro code instruction.

          lots of macros in a macro assembler should do that quite easily. (well the lots of blocks bits).

          could also possibly try other types of 'compression' like a modified giff (allowing for parameterized runs) may prove superior to huffman or whatever for some sections.

          so it should be fairly easy to create something to generate computer assisted human hinted optimally compressed microcode and interpreter.

    2. Jeff Power
      Coat

      Whatever makes it work...

      One more particle, one more dimension, ten more dimensions, twenty-six more dimensions, whatever...

  2. Winkypop Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    WhoooooHooooo!

    Whatever he said, WhoooooooHoooooo!

  3. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Preaching to the Heavenly Choir ?

    "US researchers have suggested that the elusive God particle - the Higgs boson - may actually be no less than a quintet of divine, and as yet elusive, components of the universe. " ........ And that opens up the field to the likelihood that there can be many more than just a quintet too.

    "Explanations which do not involve CP violation are less plausible, since they rely on the assumption that the matter–antimatter imbalance was present at the beginning, or on other admittedly exotic assumptions." ..... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP_violation

    And so we are to believe that any other tenured conjecture and professionally pimped and plausible present ramble on the Nature of Beings that Matter at a Big Bang Creative Incident/Mad Psychotic Moment are not themselves, other admittedly exotic assumptions?

    Oh please, you cannot be serious.

  4. lglethal Silver badge
    Joke

    So the greeks and Romans were right!!!

    Bring back the panthoens of the Gods (particles)!

  5. wheel
    FAIL

    Credit where credit is due...

    Not Wikipedia, the BBC. Don't know what I was typing...

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Halo

    An uneducated, theological guess

    Does that mean that the universally known trinity (see somewhere in The Bible) is in fact at least a "quintity"? Damn, all those years I've been believing in something truthless!

    Jobs icon, as close to a false god as it gets.

    1. lglethal Silver badge
      Joke

      Saint Jobs...

      Isnt it obvious? Saint Jobs is the new coming, the fourth in the Holy Quintity...

      ... and so it was written that the iPhone 4 would bring peace and harmony to all fanbois who embrace the new ethos of Faith, Harmony and Apple and who disregard all false prophets, with their unclean open markets and flash based servility... forever and ever .... or until the iPhone 5 is released in 2 years time... Amen...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Pint

      Think more like a Hindu.

      You've got your Trinity. Then you've got a bunch of quaternaries (cherubim, seraphim, and invisible pink unicorns), then the quinaries (saints, pirates).

      One, two, three, four, five. Bam.

  7. Julian Bradfield

    oh dear oh dear oh dear

    Where did you get that graphic from? Four notational errors in one small table...

    The W and Z bosons should be W and Z, not w and z; the photon should be γ (Greek gamma), not y (Latin y); and the neutrinos should be ν (Greek nu) not V (Latin V).

  8. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Go

    50 "anciens EUR" say...

    ...there is no Higgs and no Supersymmetry.

    Icon of the "Go" Particle mandatory.

  9. TeeCee Gold badge
    Happy

    Immortality opportunity!

    Quick lads, we can be first to define something here.

    What's the collective noun for Higgs Bosons?

    1. frank ly
      Happy

      @TeeCee...some others as well for you

      A rarity of Higgs bosons. Furthermore.....a bosom of bosons, a muff of muons, a quim of quarks., a fanny of fermions, a knob of neutrinos, a fart of photons.

      I'm in a funny mood right now.

    2. oliver Stieber
      Gates Horns

      St Neri

      St Neri since he is the patron saint of the united states special forces.

      http://saints.sqpn.com/saint-philip-neri/

      (oddly there isn't a patron saint of mass or gatherings from what I can see)

  10. Disco-Legend-Zeke

    I Continue...

    ...to believe that there is no Higgs Boson.

    Rather, particles achieve mass by attaching to spacetime.

    in the drawings here: http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2564/25645802.jpg

    the horizontal line at the bottom represents space-time, and the "braids" represent the path taken by photons to form the particle.

    1. Ed Blackshaw Silver badge
      Boffin

      I remember reading that article

      IIRC, it offers no explanation of how neutrinos can change 'flavour', which itself is a (recently confirmed) CP-violation.

      However, it is now looking more and more certain that the Standard Model is either incomplete or plain wrong. It is interesting to see the proposals that are being forwarded to replace / modify it. Hopefully we can end up with something that doesn't require fudge-factors like dark matter, dark energy, and a cosmological constant that is 120 orders of magnitude away from that predicted by theory (that is it is out by a factor of 1 followed by 120 zeroes).

      1. Ross 7

        Re:

        It was always understood that the SM was wrong. However it is sufficiently accurate in specific circumstances to be of value. It's when ppl try to expand it to include things it can't cope with that the problems occur.

        The main issue I see with it is people trying to build on it and expand it. It;s clearly not capable of being used like that, ergo all the added crap to make it "work". It's useful as far as it goes, but future models that do things like incorporate gravity will be different to the SM and not merely an extension of it.

        In many years time I'm sure ppl will look back at the SM and laugh at how foolish we were, but that's advancement for you.

      2. oliver Stieber

        he he

        I've got a funky little one.

        it doesn't really require any fudge factors at-all.

        is piss simple (think 12 year olds could learn the basic principals in a week)

        is based on pure logic (not that piss and shit set theory bullocks, that doesn't even allow for a set of all sets.)

        starts out with nothing.

        explains everything (well in relation to other things)

        like for instance, what is space, what is time, what is matter, what is gravity, what is symmetry, what is logic, what is nothing, what is random, what is existence, what is motion through space, what is motion through time, what is the speed of light, what is dark energy)

        it also forms a rhetorical proof.

        It's based on what I shall call 'higher order' logic.

        oh it also explains things like why there's more matter than anti-matter and all that kind of funky stuff.

        I think inflation and dark matter can be removed if there's a theory that allows latent momentum through time to change. Which this theory can do. (still a little bit of totality to do).

        basically it uses higher order logics (which are first proven to be required and fundamental to the nature of existence).

        aka 011i logic, and what shall have to be called super duper symmetry. (or basically everything has to have an equal and an opposite and that includes symmetry itself, and indeed there's more than one higher order logic, and one of them is ilogical in classical logic sense, it's an asymetrical logic.) so even the logic that it's based on follows all the rules.

        It's like a self completing prophecy.

        you can also derive set theory and that kind stuff from it, so it should also be somewhat of a proof for much of mathematics, so maths will no longer just be a set of axioms.

        oh what fun it is to ride a one horse open slay.

        fortunately i dropped out of the oh my god this is remedial, brain washing system asap.

        Started teaching at about the age of 6 because I was better at teaching the kids at school maths than the teachers were and they told my mum they couldn't give me anything harder to do.

        been programming since I was 8 (so you could say I know a tad about logic and that kind of stuff).

        was teaching PHds when I was 19 I think. (don't bother remembering things like age and dates really, there not that important and since I don't really have emotions they don't make the threshold for forming a memory)

        I also don't experience free will (or choice as you will) and actually know how I think. (I was well supprised when other people didn't even know how they think, that must be well weird)

        since I found that out i set my subconscious off to break it down to the purest of fundamentals and when I can be bothered I'm gona combine what it returned with my 25 years of programming skills and clone myself digitally!..

        anyhow, if you don't believe me. I'll do something interesting like tell you how you think. (there's a bit of a spectrum)

        I'll even demonstrate you thinking in a certain way without even realizing you are doing it, infact you'll probably tell me your thinking in a completely different way. (assuming you male, none ASD and feel you are somewhat logical, not gay) hopefully that will filter the spectrum down a bit.

        also if you spiritual / carer female (none religious, ASD / learning disabilities in the family), kinda bit more intellectual than 'carer' type, management type that kind of thing female I'll tell you how you think too and it will be different.

        there's a bit of a spectrum and I'd really need to meet you to do a good job, but if I get a few takers who hit the profiles I reacon I'll get 70%+ and give completely different ways of thinking.

    2. John Gamble
      Boffin

      Bad Source

      New Scientist is sort of the Daily Mail of science journalism -- if it sounds sexy, it's printed. They're not renowned for their fact-checking.

      (Important Note: Analogy between British publications made by an American. Some errors in nuance may have occurred.)

    3. oliver Stieber

      hmmm kinda.

      mattter if like the opposite of space, like a hole is space. you can't move through it for instance.

      so if there were a bit kinda missing from space it would well, kinda bend space and attract other missing bits and (even massless) stuff towards it.

      in a 'strange' considence, if space were the opposite of matter is should kinda have a 'repalling' force, like kinda create more of itself, and have somethings a bit like latent momentum, like time has latent momentum.

      That wouldn't be anything out their like that would their. You wouldn't be able to 'measure' it directly, because it's just space making more of itself. but it would move things further apart.

      It would look a little like, umm, say dark and energy. Yeh, lets call it dark energy.

      so if matter and space are opposites, there must be some kind of 'interface' or 'surface' between them. Kinda a mix of space and matter with cross over properties of both.

      I mean, you should be able to do something like fire a bit of matter out of a 'atom' and it would then mix with the space and since matter is kinda 'discrete' and space kinda 'amorphous' the matter would look like it's interfering with itself, well that's if you make it behave in a two dimensional way. and then when you measured it, well it would be a little bit like doing some calculus as your going down from 2d to 1d and you'd need to add a little magic random +c in there.

      and cos it's got the amorphic properties of space to go along with it, this kinda of, 'wave function collapse' seems a good name for now anyhow, would happen instantainiously.

      what's more you could do funky things, you could do stuff like pretend to ask it a 2d question then really ask it a 1d one, and wow, it would do it, and the relative bits would only be between the 'discrete / morphous' attoms and stuff making the measurements and not be apparent of the 'signiture' of the matter or even energy as it's mixing and mingling with space /time in it's little journey. Cos relativity would only ever work when matter and energy and space and time were in binary symmetry but when there combined in the interface between the two parts of the symmetrical set then, well their ain't nothing to be relative to silly.

      now, where's that porno I was looking for.

  11. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    New particles classifications

    Jesus

    Mohammad PBUH

    Abraham

    Buddha

    FSM

    That will open a can of worms, I would venture to say...

  12. AlistairJ
    Pint

    Let me be the first to say

    Do not underestimate the power of the Dark Side!

    Anyway, these particles only appear briefly in high-energy events. Looks suspiciously like a billiard ball getting briefly airborne, for that moment its no longer a billiard ball, its something else, not on the green baize of 4-d space time, but it soon returns to a natural state. Either that or embarrassingly you have to retrieve said ball from under someones bar stool. But I digress. Sooner or later our inter-dimensional neighbours are going to get fed up with all of this particle-flinging and send in their portal-ready shock-troops, equipped with broken off cues and smashed beer bottles. Potentially nasty.

    1. Rattus Rattus

      Cues and beer bottles?

      I thought the weapon of choice to carry through an interdimensional rift was a crowbar?

  13. Yesnomaybe

    Collective noun for Higgs Bosons

    A Geek of Higgs Bosons

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Mass

    Does it really give mass to the photon?

    What is the mass of the photon? (also, what is the predicted mass of the gluon?)

    1. Rattus Rattus

      Mass of a photon

      I'm pretty sure photons are massless, which is why they can travel at the speed of light. Things with mass can't do that. Photons do, however, have a mass-equivalent which is however many eV of energy they are carrying. This means that they can have momentum despite not having mass.

  15. oliver Stieber

    the symetrical partner of symetry is...

    the principle of "CP symmetry"

    doesn't the principle of "CP symmetry" also have to obey the principle of "CP symmetry".

    the symmetry of symmetry is asymetry.

    so theirfor for every symmetrical system their must be asymetrical system other wise the symmetrical system doesn't obey the laws of symmetry itself. (symmetry + asymetrry = nothing. )

    god dab set theory freaks.

    axiom of choice? more like axiom of random. really should be renamed I've had too many mathematicians telling me people have 'choice'

    the brain doesn't even have an unbounded +- infinity uncountable infinity within it for a start. and random is enough to be able to pick something from the set without having a starting place.

    if something like determinism has an opposite of random then symmetry must also have an opposite.

    (if you do a little digging around the net you'll find more bits of a truly self proving unified theory based on pure logic. publish little and often that's always the best way)

  16. oliver Stieber

    oh, won't find higgs most probably, will be black hole?

    I'll have to check what the force carriers actually are first, and do a bit more tidying.

    but short hunch,

    energy is lack of momentum through time.

    'matter' is kinda a lack of space.

    stationary matter would have latent momentum through time and zero momentum through space, it would also have no size.

    I realize that matter and energy are in ways equivalent. so if there was actually a particle that give matter it's mass then that would be apparent though time dilation and it's decay. I would think that on it's own it would also be a singularity and as such matter cannot exist without energy.

    anyhow,

    3 dimensions of space 1 of time.

    energy 1 dimensional matter 3 dimensional, also anti-matter and lots of different types of energy.

    forces.

    3 forces of energy 1 force of space.

    3 energy forces are 'fields' in space, so would the space force be a field in time? of sorts.

    have a think.

    e=mc^2

    c is the speed of light, speed is both time and space. so this shows the that not only are energy and matter equivalent but also that space and time are related to energy and matter.

    matter attracts, space repels (dark energy)

    matter is like a 'lack' of space, space kinda creates more of itself.

    matter is somewhat discrete. (well only somewhat and in some ways)

    space is in many ways amorphous.

    QM is like a mix of matter and energy and space and time. and as such has both the discrete and amorphous properties. particles behave as if they are 'everywhere' until you ask them to be somewhere.

    oh that's a 3 logic set symmetry. matter/energy.

    space/time. and a mixture of both of them.

    hmm... possibly time to look at CP symmetry again, this time with a thinking hat on? after all comparison between the two things requires that there is a 'surface' or 'interface' between the two things, an a ab b 3 higher order logic.

    ahh... but I digress.

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