
We're all gonna die
Seriously however, this is amazing work. Keep it up fellas, and keep us posted.
Lets just hope Europe falling into the drain will quash spending on this project...
If people still wore as many hats as formerly, CERN would have seen plenty of caps in the air when the latest Higgs boson results were announced. The LHC data is still shy of certainty: as spokesperson Fabriola Gianotti says in this video, a lot more measurements will be needed, but those measurements are going to concentrate …
Being able to manipulate mass in the way we do electricity or light- I wonder if the BOFH would feel the need to replace his magnetic pinch with a bosonic pinch? Mind you, fitting the LHC into a suitcase may be problematic.
I'm just doubtful we'll see much domestic use out of this research in our lifetimes...
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The papers that show a suggestion of the Higgs boson were going to be published anyway even though they are less than 3 sigma. Nobody has said it's been detected - I'd have thought you, as a scientist would have noticed that - just that the range of energies where it could be have been narrowed and there are some interesting peaks in that area.
It's exciting not because it's been proven, but because it's looking very much like it will be by the end of next year when they have enough data to go beyond 3 sigma.
It's a narrative; the hunt is closing in and we'll probably find out for (near-)certain soon. I, for one, find this interesting.
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>Secondly, “I can’t tell you what new things will come out of the completion of the Standard >Model, but they will be amazing.”
>Yes, just as soon as all of us can carry a TeV scale accelerator in our pockets
Why does it have to fit in a pocket to be useful? Unlike many articles around here this one isn't aimed at those who think technology==mobile phone.
I'd be happy with (for example, not saying its what we'll get or that its even possible) a wormhole generator that took about the same amount of space as Heathrow airport but let you go on holiday to Mars instead of Spain (with an added benefit of not having to eat the inflight 'meal').
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There may be no "new physics" (and certainly no *usable* new physics) - the Standard Model might be approximately correct (it certainly is not fully correct as it has trouble with neutrino masses for one) up to and exceeding all energies reachable in colliders -- forever.
You would get the expected Higgs Boson and that's it. No more opening Christmas Boxes. One would be reduced to practicing numerology and group theory in the dark forever (as well as make shocking obedience to small, ruguous and squamous statues depicting the stringy multiverse). There would still be hope for interesting data in astrophysical measurements, maybe.
But no Minovsky particles or anything. Which is the "desert hypothesis". As possible intro at: http://arxiv.org/abs/0708.3550
We already know lots of stuff outside the standard model.
Gravity, for a starter. One of the most stunning numbers in physics is 10^38, the ratio of the strength of the Electromagnetic force to the Gravitational one. You don't really understand anything about matter, until you appreciate that the electromagnetic force between an electron and a proton is that many times stronger than the gravitational force between the same.
Then there's dark matter, inferred from the observed nature of galaxies and the impossibility of binding them gravitationally if what we see is all there is. (There are good theoretical reasons why it can't be lumps of non-luminous ordinary matter, sized somewhere between marbles and Jupiters).
And "dark energy", needed to explain why the universe appears to be not only expanding but accellerating.
We might get lucky and spot a particle or three of dark matter in the CERN detectors. (Oddly that may be more likely while the LHC is down than when it's up). Or careful observations of the things we know it can manipulate may help pin down a better theory that in turn will guide our observations. (It's easier to find a needle in a haystack if you come to suspect it may be magnetic).
And if those neutrinos really are going faster than light, it's time to tear up all the theories and start again.
Can anyone here shed some light on this? When it (and other boson particles) first started to be mentioned on science programmes on television, it was pronounced bozon. However, news readers in particular (pun not intended,) have been recently referring to the Higgs boatswain. Which is correct?
Can it be gamma rays *all* the way up? At some energy you'd have a photon with more energy than the entire observable universe. Maybe the entire universe, if it's finite. This isn't pedantry at all, if the whole universe did start very small in the big bang.
Some (exotic, unproved) theories suggest that photons of sufficient energy may travel slower than low-energy light. Slower-thn-light photons, sort of a counterpart to faster-than-light neutrinos? Observations of the next supernova may throw some , er, light on this.
A minor caveat : you write that «[t]he “signature” that distinguishes a Higgs event from a quark collision is this: the Higgs converts all of its mass – obeying e=mc2 – into energy in the form of the photons; and the colliding quarks have much lower mass». Most quarks, as shown in this table (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/particles/quark.html) are estimated to have masses in the MeV range, or some three orders of magnitude less than that hypothesised for the Higgs boson, but Bottom quarks are in the GeV range, and Top quarks, at an estimated 172 GeV, would actually be more massive than the Higgs boson. In any event, nice work at Cern ; it will be interesting to see if subsequent data will push the degree of confirmation to the desired 5σ....
Henri
Lovely explanation; now please do one for quantum computing :) The new chip is way more interesting than the fact that the Higgs boson still hasn't been discovered but it's still where they thought it was in the summer :)
As for the Standard Model, it's pretty much known to be incorrect. Not only does it exclude gravitons or any other form of gravity, it also fails to explain dark matter and/or dark energy. So finding the Higgs shows the SM is consistent, but not that it's correct :)
"For those with the training ... "
Oh ... understanding science requires training does it? There I was thinking that merely having an opinion made one qualified to understand complex scientific arguments. Contrast this billion dollar speculative whathaveyou with that other billion dollar speculative whathaveyou ...
Fair point, but every time someone solidly nails down a bit of the Standard Model, some yahoo comes along and uses it as a launching point for new and unexpected adventures in theoretical physics. You can expect that, if confirmed, the existiance and described nature of the Higgs-Bosun will only inspire young physicists to go looking for their own bit of turf - However else will they make a name for themselves?
Great if subsequent data confirms these indications so they can claim discovery of the Higgs boson and get know its mass more precisely. This would be even more interesting if this helps them come up with an explanation for dark matter, which appears to be most of the mass of universe, the problem being we don't seem to have a clue as to what it is.
This paragraph makes no bloody sense:
Interaction: Because the Higgs interacts weakly, there’s a very low probability that any particular event will actually create one, which means that CERN has to create billions of collisions just to generate enough events to get a reasonable probability that they’ve created Higgs bosons.
Let me fix it:
Interaction: Because the Higgs interacts weakly, there’s a very low probability that any particular [collision] will actually create one, which means that CERN has to create billions of collisions just to generate enough [Higgs bosons] to [detect them in] reasonable [numbers to prove] that they’ve created Higgs bosons.
>"Via the class of particles called the fermions, we get protons, neutrons (both built out of fermions), and electrons (which is a fermion); from the exchange of bosons, we get energies."
Not quite correct. Everything already has energy, both fermions and bosons; what we get from the exchange of bosons is *forces*.
The joke continues: The priest replied, "But, see, good sir, we have been holding a mass since Christ was born some 2000 years ago without ever have heard of you or seen you." To which Higgs Boson replies, "May be, but you need me for your gravity too which holds you down to the church floor." The priest was unsurprised and said, "Oh I see, I always thought it was the graveyard by the side which was the source of all the gravity; in that case, Mr. Higgs Boson, Sir, you may belong there."
Richard, a remark from a layman also (physicist however): Protons and neutrons each consist of three quarks, whereas the electron itself seems to be a fundamental particle. The term ,fermion' refers to the behaviour of all these particles (i.e. they obey the Pauli principle - two fermions cannot occupy the exact same quantum state - Bosons however can).