17 replies to this topic

[∂an]

So it seems CERN has finally found the elusive Higgs Boson (to 5 sigma probability anyway), the carrier particle for the Higgs field proposed by the Standard Model to give mass to particles.

Nature: Physicists declare victory in Higgs hunt
Phys.org: CERN physicists report strong evidence of Higgs boson

This goes someway to verifying the basic postulates of the Standard Model, although it appears its behaviour is not entirely as predicted. Quite amazing the that in one quiet corner of the universe, a bunch of monkeys have built a massive underground doughnut to smash protons together to discover the building blocks of matter. Reality really is stranger than fiction!

Would be cool to start a discussion of what people think about the search for the Higgs Boson and the Standard Model of particle physics. Will this model or a variant thereof and experimental facilities such as the LHC be able to prove the existence of dark matter and the proposed extra dimensions of space time? If so, what does this say about the universe we live in and does it have any repercussions for the study of life and consciousness?

Exiting times! Reading these articles makes me wish I had studied physics instead of engineering

[dundee]

mmmmmmm donuts

[space cadet swami]

The biggest donut ever...

[CβL]

Watch out for the bRAMBLE


As I understand it they've only found a boson (the heaviest boson yet) that matches one of the predicted mass estimates (if it even does) of the Higg's Boson. While I am thrilled they have found something, I'm not sure we can close the chapter on the Higg's field and start the new chapter tomorrow.

What I really want to do is study this stuff myself in one of these years and see if I can find some insight into space itself. For example, is the intuitive notion that we are in 3 (or 4, ignoring higher dimensions for now) dimensions accurate? What if some of the 3 (or 4) dimensions are redundant, and we only need 1.333333 or 1.414 dimensions (a fractal dimension). What if dimension is just an emergent property of the underlying structures? I'm reasonably sure that "spacetime" is quantized (unfortunately I have not proven it with equations, but if energy is quantized, and it takes energy to move, it can be roughly reasoned that spacetime is quantized as well, leading to a grid where you can only be on certain quantified locations corresponding to "one unit of energy's travel" - maybe this is that quantum foam I have heard about, not sure).

What if there's another layer of time? I'm sure you know that your perception of time is warped by how fast your brain is working; the number of thoughts, the influence of sound (sound is the primary indicator of "rate of time" to humans). So that's layer 3. Layer 2 is the local time; the time that we measure with atomic clocks. Increase the acceleration and time will be measured differently relative to a stationary clock, etc (I call this time, river time). Then what if there's a Layer 1? I heard a reference a couple of years ago to time being grainy (some physics theory), which sparked this idea. Layer 1 time is this grainy base. A fluctuation in layer 1 time would be impossible to measure directly, as it affects the measuring equipment just as much as what that equipment measures. It's sort of like "god's pause button". The inspiration for this is that we actually cannot directly measure time. All we can and ever measured is the number of events, and their relative ordering. The humble clock measures an hour by 60 occurences of a minute event. The minute event occurs every 60 second events. The second event occurs every 1000 millisecond events.... The atomic clock works through counting the number of oscillations of a Cesium atom undergoes in an electric field (from memory that's how it works, don't quote me). But the point is that we've still just counted something. And if there was some kind of pause between the oscillations (all oscillations, or even all oscillations in an extremely large area), we just could simply not know (at least I can't think of a way with current methods).

When I come up with these crazy ideas, it's not say that I think it must be this way. But can it be this way? And what of the ramifications to re-formulation of existing equations?
In fact, that's what sparked this entire saga. Maxwell's equations were re-formulated by Heaviside. Einsteins relativity equations have been reformulated many times with surprising results (unfortunately I don't know much about those results). Or how Galileo questioned the status quo (with something that defied intuition, and also I'm sure he was not the first), and paved the way for countless comparisons to Galileo.

I think most of the simple intuitive beliefs have been rooted out, so it's probably left to a systematic method to find the rest. The simplest way I can think of is to just question all my intuitive beliefs.
Sorry for rambling. ^^

Edited by βluntmuffin, 05 July 2012 - 10:42 PM.

[Thelema]

proving the higgs won't really extend theory in ANY way. It just goes to prove the standard model. There's some even more exciting work going on with Tau neutrinos at the moment which could necessitate an extension of the standard model. See this weeks new scientist.

[∂an]

As I understand it they've only found a boson (the heaviest boson yet) that matches one of the predicted mass estimates (if it even does) of the Higg's Boson. While I am thrilled they have found something, I'm not sure we can close the chapter on the Higg's field and start the new chapter tomorrow.

Ahh yeah I was wondering why they were so sure this particle was the Higgs, thats a good piece of info. Its quite amazing that its mass is supposed to be over 100 times that of a proton yet it only decays into 2 hadrons and electrons... I guess these must have a very high energy?

I think most of the simple intuitive beliefs have been rooted out, so it's probably left to a systematic method to find the rest. The simplest way I can think of is to just question all my intuitive beliefs.
Sorry for rambling. ^^

not at all that was very interesting!

[∂an]

proving the higgs won't really extend theory in ANY way. It just goes to prove the standard model.

true, but that was the purpose of the experiment and there is value in proving a theory as it gives confidence to make further predictions.

[ThunderIdeal]

• 
  2012-07-05 11:25 AM
  Report this comment | #45979 Robert L. Oldershaw said:
  Here's a dose of reality to compensate for the somewhat hysterical credulity on display recently by physicists and media alike.
  No theory, and certainly not the Higgs Mechanism, was able to predict the mass of the Higgs boson definitively. Pre-LHC the guesses for the Higgs boson mass ranged roughly from about 100 GeV to 800 GeV!
  The Higgs boson was NOT discovered. What was discovered was a boson resonance that is "Higgs-like", but has some anomalous properties like a factor of 2 excess for di-photon decays and missing tau-tau decays (which should be there).
  The new boson was never observed directly because it decays too quickly for that. What was observed were regular old particle decay products and the identity of the new boson is inferred, with all the uncertainties that inference entails.
  It's time for the real science to begin on identifying this new boson resonance, without the distraction deeply engrained hopes, expectations and biases.
  Robert L. Oldershaw
  Discrete Scale Relativity

[∂an]

I think the CERN people feel they need to do these spectacular press releases to keep the funding coming, and to justify their research to the public. Scientific research institutes are becoming more and more like businesses, and at the end of the day must get paid to operate.

[ballzac]

While you are right that there is a need for organisations like CERN to prove that the funding they receive is being put to good use, the excitement in the scientific community regarding the possible detection of the Higgs boson is well and truly genuine. There cannot possibly be certainty at this stage as to whether it is the Higgs boson predicted by the standard model, but it is, nonetheless, a "Higg's-like" particle, and regardless of whether it is the Higgs boson as predicted by the standard model, the Higgs boson yet different to that predicted by the standard model, or a completely different boson that has not been predicted, the implications will be profound. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if it is substantially different to the Higgs boson of the standard model, this will actually prove to be more interesting, and more useful, to researchers in the field than if it is found to be the same old Higgs boson that has been 'known' about for years.

[ThunderIdeal]

i didn't intend to rain on their parade by the way, i just found that statement interesting.

they had doctor karl on some program and it was good to hear the news from somebody with a brain. it bugs me that they let any dumbass interview people like that, but at least they weren't interviewing a dumbass. um my point was.... they mentioned the tremendous expense of the LHC and he said "well it isn't very expensive, it only costs as much as a few B2 bombers" which was incredibly poignant. B2 bombers cost billions but it did give some relevant perspective on the matter. the US could have built several LHC's with government funding but they chose to build stealth bombers.

[Wameron36]

[img]
Exiting times! Reading these articles makes me wish I had studied physics instead of engineering

I often think the exact same thing!

[FancyPants]

I sometimes wonder if dimensionality is just relative "thickness" of the infinitely conductive energy field. Can we perceive into other dimensions? Does an energy field require polarity? Explains the yin/yang idea still within the one Whole. God is a battery lol. Different subatomic particles behaving in a universal pattern, forming "objects" materially anyway. Maybe the chiral bend of many things (DNA, galaxies) is the result of a sort of bouncing off in one direction (off matter), a chaotic effect? For there to be direction there has to be movement. For movement there has to be two points of reference (at least). For POR there needs to be space. Equals time.

[2Deep2Handle]

Maybe the Mayans were right and on Dec 23rd this year, Mr. Higgs fires up his Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and he, and the rest of the world gets a (very brief) first hand view of this elusive Bosun particle.

The particle isnt meant to oscillate at all? have we ever had a single bosun isolated in our universe before(or this particular bosun that isnt meant to oscillate anyway)? Wasnt there talk Mr Higgs LHC machine could theoretically create a black hole, but the quelled all the publics fears by saying it would only exist for some stupid figure of a second because it would eat itself out before it could grow larger than a marble or something?

Exciting either way you look at it

[whitewind]

It could create a black hole which gets dragged down by gravity in to the Earth's core where it slowly eats up all the matter until the earth is totally consumed. As we enter the event horizon of the black hole time is stretched out to infinity which means that we will live forever.

Edited by whitewind, 09 July 2012 - 05:51 PM.

[∂an]

they mentioned the tremendous expense of the LHC and he said "well it isn't very expensive, it only costs as much as a few B2 bombers" which was incredibly poignant. B2 bombers cost billions but it did give some relevant perspective on the matter. the US could have built several LHC's with government funding but they chose to build stealth bombers.

wikipedia says the budget for the LHC is 7.5 billion euros. that about 1% of Australia's GDP, so yes a lot of money! I think its a great thing that our society can see value on spending such a large amount of money on a purely intellectual excercise with no immediate material benefits. But then as you say we are spending even larger amounts of money on killing machines, and there are some countries in the world that cannot feed their people. Should the goal of humanity be to spread all resources equally and make sure no one falls under the poverty line, or should it be to push the boundaries of creativity or novelty at all costs? I guess the answer is a compromise between both, as both are probably important for our future world.

[dionysus]

i'm pretty new to the whole particle physics thing, and don't really have any one else to ask about such things, so i will post my questions here lol, i hope no one minds.

so, from what i can make out, it is theorised that the universe is made up of all of these infininte, '3' dimensional grids, or 'fields', that intersect or interfere with eachother at different points to create disruptions percievable in the fourth dimension (time) as mass/gravity/electromagnetricity what have you? does this imply that all events percievable happen at intersections of this grid, and the transitional spaces are between time (similar to what someone suggested earier) ? are they reckoning that this boson may be the higgs because the particles they did see originating from that point are those theorised to colide on said grids into the percievable mass?

this is all pretty interesting, not sure why i waited until now to become interested

edit: spelling

Edited by dionysus, 10 July 2012 - 08:52 PM.

[Wameron36]

wikipedia says the budget for the LHC is 7.5 billion euros. that about 1% of Australia's GDP, so yes a lot of money! I think its a great thing that our society can see value on spending such a large amount of money on a purely intellectual excercise with no immediate material benefits. But then as you say we are spending even larger amounts of money on killing machines, and there are some countries in the world that cannot feed their people. Should the goal of humanity be to spread all resources equally and make sure no one falls under the poverty line, or should it be to push the boundaries of creativity or novelty at all costs? I guess the answer is a compromise between both, as both are probably important for our future world.

That is an interesting point isn't it. I know naturally my first reaction when I hear of the money spent on warfare is why isn't this being used else where, for far more important reasons like feeding those living in poverty, but then when it comes to something like this the thought doesn't even cross my mind initially. At the same time I see research like this beneficial, whereas weaponry not so much.