Tevatron refines Higgs boson picture “Unfortunately, this hint is not significant enough to conclude that the Higgs boson exists”, says Fermilab physicist Rob Roser – but the difficult last particle is getting closer to revealing its secrets. Today’s particle physics excitement comes from Fermilab results presented at a conference in La Thuille in Italy, where …
Nice to see some life in the 'old machine' yet
I hope we either find Higgs or we don't... Despite an obvious opportunity for a cat joke, whatever we discover, or don't, will open the doors to different ways of thinking that will drive humanity towards greater understanding.
One of the best (off the wall) hopes we have is from this outfit
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/
Sponsored by the guys at RIM none the less!
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/About/History/History/1/
Its a bit presumptuous awarding yourself the boffin Icon isnt it? Try to RTFA before accusing people of "massaging the statistics". The article quite clearly stated that the Tevatron was shut down in September. Since you clearly didnt read the article, you might also like to know that they are currently processing a mountain of data, which is very, very different from massaging statistics. They have enough data to last until June.
Presumably whoever upvoted you also just skipped foaming mouthed straight to the comments.
The problem with particle events in accelerators is that first we mostly postulate them theoretically then want to see them buried in a lot of noise. Just spotting a few of them makes us believe that our whole theory is right. However, it may not be so; they just could be freak fragments, like the ones we get after an earthquake, the fragments are not exactly what went into building those structures. Higgs boson also is part of that slightly deluding scientific approach.
Gravity has roots in some very apparent physics. laugh it off, as it's not easy to realize that basic quantum leap itself is a source of gravitation.
at the (high) risk of sounding like a total dolt, what does it actually mean if they find it?
Will it mean some boffin somewhere can create a time machine, or an FTL drive, or a Transporter beam, or a death-star ray gun?
Its fabulously important sounding, but where does it take us (us=humanity..)
It is unlikely to directly take us anywhere, but that isn't the point, the important thing is what we will be able to do with the knowledge later.
Although we have use amounts of information about the properties of elements we are still regularly making discoveries that we can't explain (e.g. why does X go super-conductive in a magnetic field when at pressure?? Y & Z don't ...), understanding the building blocks will help us understand why and hopefully help us correctly predict those properties with a greater degree of accuracy. Then we can reduce the amount of "poke it and see what happens" science that is currently done because we will be able to predict with a high degree of confidence what will happen!
> I didn't think the Higgs boson "created mass" at all? I
> thought that proving existence of the particle will prove
> existence of the field, and the field is responsible for
> mass. Have I mis-remembered or is the article using a
> popular misconception?
A "popular shorthand". I should know better. The Higgs boson, as I understand it, was the particle which in the very early universe mediated the interactions giving mass to matter (and please note that this is still greatly oversimplified and abbreviated).
Richard Chirgwin
The Register 
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