Higgs boson discovered?

It is interesting to note we are still discovering things all the time. Look back 20 years, 10 years, then try and look forward 20 years.

Clearly, those who profess to know all about climate change, what foods are bad for us, or what social programs are going to benifits us need to put their power hungry ego's aside and look around at the wonders around us. Those who think they know it all don't have a clue. ;)
 
Geico266 said:
It is interesting to note we are still discovering things all the time. Look back 20 years, 10 years, then try and look forward 20 years.

Clearly, those who profess to know all about climate change, what foods are bad for us, or what social programs are going to benifits us need to put their power hungry ego's aside and look around at the wonders around us. Those who think they know it all don't have a clue. ;)
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No one will know everything, the question is do you know what you need to?
 
Geico266 said:
I know better than to trust experts and politicians. ;)
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Pretty much anyone who professes to know what I need more than I do, without being in my shoes, can pound sand. Politely.
 
Somebody please explain to me the significance. They have obviously discovered particles my Dysan can't sweep up.
 
So at one time there was a little something or other in a massive expanse of nothingness and one day it exploded into what we have today.

Someone want to explain where that little something or other came from


Just sayin...
 
EppyGA said:
So at one time there was a little something or other in a massive expanse of nothingness and one day it exploded into what we have today.
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More like there was no vast expanse of nothingness to have anything in it, or not have anything in it, to start with. No volume, no time, there wasn't even nothing because even nothing didn't exist.
Then something happened somehow. An explosion requires something to explode into which didn't exist so it pushed out and created the volume in the process.

Or something like that anyway.


Someone want to explain where that little something or other came from
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All reading and education and comprehension aside, I'm still at a complete loss on why anything, including nothing, should exist in the first place and that doesn't even include trivial stuff like the little something that created the Universe.

It makes your head hurt trying to figure it out doesn't it?
 
I miss the super conducting super collider:yikes:
 
Where does it all end?

So now they have discovered the glue that holds everything together, that's wonderful, now what will they do with this phenomenal discovery? Where will it take us?

Perhaps now having found it, they can develop a way of dissolving it. We will be able to turn our enemies into sand or something.

Perhaps they can unglue fog and clouds, we won't have to learn IFR piloting. All we will have to do is flip a switch and SHAZAM, no cloud, no fog, not even night. We will see the airport from ten miles out.

No really, this is all very exciting. I can hardly recall being happier about anything.

-John
 
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Sac Arrow said:
Somebody please explain to me the significance.
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There were looking for it two generations, it is supposed to explain why matter has mass.

But this is far from over, the so called Grand Unified Theory - the theory that would explain practically everything in Physics is still very much an elusive dream.
fgcason said:
More like there was no vast expanse of nothingness to have anything in it, or not have anything in it, to start with. No volume, no time, there wasn't even nothing because even nothing didn't exist.
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When I try to fall asleep fast I am trying to think what it would be like if NOTHING existed. No Universe, no laws of Physics, nothing.
 
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olasek said:
When I try to fall asleep fast I am trying to think what it would be like if NOTHING existed. No Universe, no laws of Physics, nothing.
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How do you know anything actually exists? ;)

Welcome to Philosophy 101. ;)
 
Bebo ergo sum. I'm a Higgs bosun's mate.
 
Wow, the level of erudition in here is so high I am unable to breath...
Remember, the Devil will find ways to keep a clever little monkey mind occupied...

You see, it all started when Oog said to Og, what is beyond the end of our valley and OG said, Nothing is beyond our valley, that is the end of everything...
Well, time passes and a clever young fella decides to climb the sheer rocks to the top of the rim of the valley and calls down that he can see all the way to the far side of a grassy plain... That is where the end of the world is...
More time, more clever monkeys have trekked across the valleys and across the plains to the edge of a forest... Another young fella climbs to the top of a big tree and excitedly announces he can see water! And that is where the end of everything is...
More time passes and the monkeys have finally migrated all the way through the forest to the shore of a rolling ocean... A young fella climbs a tree and says he can see the end of the world where the water stops and there is nothing beyond and that is the end of everything...
Time passes and a clever young fella takes a couple pieces of glass and some brass tubing and he can see a blurry image of the moons of Jupiter...
So, this starts a frenzy of building bigger telescopes and as each new super scope is put in use the smug little monkeys declare they have found the edge of the universe and the beginning of time...
Now the clever little monkeys' Hubble Telescope has pushed the edge of Our Valley out to 14.3 billion light years away and that is the end of everything including time... (actually, I prefer Furlongs per Fortnight myself)
See a pattern here you clever little monkeys?
 
fgcason said:
It makes your head hurt trying to figure it out doesn't it?
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It does actually. I love that folks smarter than me have been trying to figure it out and maybe some day they truly will. My feeble mind though says we're really missing something here. ;)
 
EppyGA said:
So at one time there was a little something or other in a massive expanse of nothingness and one day it exploded into what we have today.

Someone want to explain where that little something or other came from


Just sayin...
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My theory is that the little something was all contained in a cosmic Whoopie Cushion -- and God sat on it! He's such a prankster. :D
 
Sac Arrow said:
Somebody please explain to me the significance. They have obviously discovered particles my Dysan can't sweep up.
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Actually it's very likely that this is the clue to what may be filling your vacuum right now as well as filling what we thought was the vacuum of space, dark matter, and accelerating the universe to a cold and disorderly state. The real question is what creates dark matter and dark energy? Are they of a dimension not totally within our universe? These are the big issue questions, and the reason we seek their answers is that thinking is the meaning of life. Thought is the only thing we radiate back into the universe.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Somebody please explain to me the significance. They have obviously discovered particles my Dysan can't sweep up.
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AFaIK the primary significance is that it plugs a big hole in contemporary theoretical quantum mechanics. Higgs proposed such a particle many years ago after concluding that it's property of imposing the effects of mass on other particles would tie up a lot of loose ends.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Somebody please explain to me the significance. They have obviously discovered particles my Dysan can't sweep up.
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Actually, this discovery may be what it takes for them to figure out how to dissolve dust, and will make your Dyson obsolete! I can see it now. Big electrostatic grids across the heat/ac vents, obliterating dust as it flows through the system, by firing massive quantities of Higgs Bosuns at them....

John Baker said:
Where does it all end?

So now they have discovered the glue that holds everything together, that's wonderful, now what will they do with this phenomenal discovery? Where will it take us?
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Maybe they can also use this newfound particle to create glue that will actually hold the rear-view mirror to the windshield!
 
hopmedic said:
Actually, this discovery may be what it takes for them to figure out how to dissolve dust, and will make your Dyson obsolete! I can see it now. Big electrostatic grids across the heat/ac vents, obliterating dust as it flows through the system, by firing massive quantities of Higgs Bosuns at them....


Maybe they can also use this newfound particle to create glue that will actually hold the rear-view mirror to the windshield!
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Until someone somewhere does a study that proves that this, too, causes cancer and high cholesterol. :mad2:
 
CJones said:
Until someone somewhere does a study that proves that this, too, causes cancer and high cholesterol. :mad2:
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That's alright, it will only be dangerous if used in California.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Somebody please explain to me the significance. They have obviously discovered particles my Dysan can't sweep up.
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There is a so-called "standard model" of particle physics. This explains all the various types of particles one can make in a collider or in cosmic rays, out of six types of quarks and three families of "leptons" (one of which is the familiar electron and its paired neutrino).

It also provides a model for how particles might interact in order to make their internal energy appear as mass (E=mc^2 and all that). In the Standard Model, all interactions between particles involve other particles, so this makes a distinct prediction of a new particle. This is what the LHC team is claiming to have detected. It's the purpose for which the LHC was built, so this is a big deal.
 
airguy said:
That's alright, it will only be dangerous if used in California.
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Yes. There are many substances that cause cancer in California, which causes me to reflect and be thankful that I have never lived there.

Ok, so I did live there, for under a year, when I was less than 2, and my dad was stationed in SanDiego, but I don't remember it, so it doesn't count! :raspberry:
 
MAKG1 said:
There is a so-called "standard model" of particle physics. This explains all the various types of particles one can make in a collider or in cosmic rays, out of six types of quarks and three families of "leptons" (one of which is the familiar electron and its paired neutrino).

It also provides a model for how particles might interact in order to make their internal energy appear as mass (E=mc^2 and all that). In the Standard Model, all interactions between particles involve other particles, so this makes a distinct prediction of a new particle. This is what the LHC team is claiming to have detected. It's the purpose for which the LHC was built, so this is a big deal.
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Yes, but they're only 99% certain
 
Jaybird180 said:
Yes, but they're only 99% certain
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You will NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER hear a scientist claim 100% certainty.

Example: it's not a 100% certainty that all the air molecules in your room won't spontaneously fly out the door, making a vacuum. But you might have to wait 10^100,000 times the age of the universe for it to happen. I wouldn't hold my breath....

If you think there is a such thing as a perfect measurement, you'll be disappointed in everything. Any claim of perfection is a lie.
 
Actually the announcement was that the current level of certainty is 99.999% - which is pretty darn near a hundred percent but not good enough for the particle-physics crowd to call it a certainty.
 
There was once a time when great innovations and discoveries were made on our shores, now not so much anymore. The LHC could never have been built here, even if they had the money. Making it through thousands of regulations, decades of litigation, union demands, and assorted political shenanigans, such endeavors are now impossible.

Yet it could be done on the soil of several countries I think it was four if I remember right, in Europe. If such a proposal had been made here that we even slightly infringed on another states soil, in no way could the squabbling have ever ended.

While the rest of the world is advancing, we are in legal and political limbo as we try to hold on to what we have now. California is the worst, they will not be happy until we are all walking and wearing nothing, lest we contaminate ourselves or our air.

-John
 
airguy said:
Actually the announcement was that the current level of certainty is 99.999% - which is pretty darn near a hundred percent but not good enough for the particle-physics crowd to call it a certainty.
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That level of certainty, though, applies to whether this is actually a discovery of a new particle (signal/noise etc.), NOT to whether it's the Higgs. The most they'll say is, yep it seems to be a real signal, and yep if it's real then it's a boson. It also has at least some of the decay properties expected of the Higgs, but is it actually the Higgs? Is there only one Higgs or are there multiple Higgses? I don't think anyone knows at this point. This is going to be a very exciting time for a lot of my colleagues and it kinda makes me wish I'd gone into that field of physics.

BTW a boson is a particle with "integer spin". "Spin" is an property of particles in quantum mechanics that is much like spin in the macroscopic world, except even point particles can have spin. Spin is quantized and must either be an integer or a half-integer multiple of the reduced Planck's constant (h/2pi). Particles with half-integer spin are called fermions, and particles with integer spin are called bosons.
 
azure said:
This is going to be a very exciting time for a lot of my colleagues and it kinda makes me wish I'd gone into that field of physics.
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That's not something I think I'll ever wish. I rather like being able to publish papers with fewer than 100 coauthors.
 
John Baker said:
There was once a time when great innovations and discoveries were made on our shores, now not so much anymore. The LHC could never have been built here, even if they had the money. Making it through thousands of regulations, decades of litigation, union demands, and assorted political shenanigans, such endeavors are now impossible.
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REGULATIONS?

Are you kidding?

The capability was planned, funded and half executed at a massive site southeast of Dallas, TX. It was canceled purely by a lack of will by a Republican senate over its cost, not for any regulatory reason at all.

Not every bit of reality can be squeezed into the often-repeated mantra that regulations kill everything.
 
It takes such a huge ego to even imagine that you can discover the "G*d" particle and explain everything away. Scientists and politicians share profoundly accelerated sense of self importance, imo.
 
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airguy said:
Actually the announcement was that the current level of certainty is 99.999% - which is pretty darn near a hundred percent but not good enough for the particle-physics crowd to call it a certainty.
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No, they've claimed 5 sigma probability, not 5 9's probability...my stats stuff is a bit old, but IIRC, that should be about 99.9%
 
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