Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

blogs.scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 153 posts

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#81

Post by arijo »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #55
D_Alex wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously...? Not "all", but in general, "blue sky research" does deliver massive benefits (just look at what is in front of your face right now! It would not be there without quantum physics.). Also, take a look at http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind96/chap_8.pdf , table 8.1, for estimates of rates of return on scientific research.

To be honest, I know very little of the history of LCDs. From what I can read on Wikipedia, the chain of research went something like: - Liquid crystals observed. - Materials science research into the properties of liquid crystals, during which the TN-effect was discovered. - Industry scientists looking for a display technology that did not rely on vacuum tubes use the TN-effect to develop practical liquid crystal di…

He was referring to everything that uses transistors ( in this specific case not only the monitor but also the computer and all the internet infrastructure that you're using to criticize blue sky research)

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#82

Post by lucasjung »

henrikschroder wrote: post #19
lucasjung wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The question isn't, "Did this experiment advance scientific knowledge," the question is, "Was this a prudent and appropriate use of tax money, especially in light of the enormous opportunity costs inherent in any expenditure of tax money?"

That is ridiculous, ROI is relevant if you're talking about applied research where you have a short-term goal and can make the calculation. But the LHC is basic research, you can't do ROI calculations on that. Instead, you dump as much money as you can into it, and then you know that decades down the line, you'll be very happy that you did it.

>...you can't do ROI calculations on that. Instead, you dump as much money as you can into it, and then you know that decades down the line, you'll be very happy that you did it.

I could apply this quote to all kinds of other ways of spending money, and it would hold true (e.g. infrastructure or social programs). And while you can't do ROI calculations on long-range programs, you can make informed decisions about which are more likely to provide the greatest benefits. In fact, if you are talking about spending billions of dollars of other people's money, you have a moral and ethical obligation to do exactly that.

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#83

Post by nazgulnarsil »

teraflop wrote: post #12
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #5

I should place a long bet regarding dark matter...

The Higgs boson has essentially nothing to with dark matter, as far as we know. In fact, they're not even in the same category: the Higgs boson is a theoretical prediction that has yet to be observed (or conclusively ruled out), whereas dark matter is a real, observable thing in the cosmos that we don't yet have a theory to explain.

I know that. This was in reference to making bets in physics against things that are widely regarded as "probably existing."

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#84

Post by guygurari »

I'm a particle physics grad student. My god, what utter nonsense. The only reasonably accurate paragraph is this:

    "And, more importantly, the lower energy range from 114 to just under 145 billion electron volts, a region of energy that Fermilab has determined, through earlier experiments, may harbor the Higgs, has not been ruled out. But the Higgs is quickly running out of places to hide."
The region of higher Higgs mass is indeed ruled out (at 95% confidence), and currently the bound is even stronger than stated -- the Higgs mass is expected to be between 114-130 GeV if it exists.

The article's main flaw is its assumption that, because the remaining mass window is "small", it decreases our chances of finding the Higgs. This is not the case for several reasons. Most importantly, it has been known since the planning stages of the accelerator that a Higgs with such a low mass is more difficult to find, in the sense that it requires running the experiment for longer, collecting more statistics, before we can decide whether or not it exists. So it comes as no surprise that we first have conclusive results about the higher mass range. It just happens that the Higgs, if it exists, doesn't have a high mass, so we keep looking.

It is expected that in 1-2 years we will have enough statistics to either discover or rule out the Higgs in the remaining mass window.

The second mistake the article makes is in claiming that not finding the Higgs is somehow a bad thing. That it means the LHC was a waste of taxpayer money. I would say quite the opposite. If the LHC finds the Higgs and nothing else, then it will only confirm our existing model and we will learn nothing new about the world (except for the value of the Higgs mass). This is the worst possible outcome. On the other hand, not finding the Higgs would be an extremely exciting result, since it would open the way to less well-explored ideas about the origin of mass. The goal of the LHC is to teach us about the world, not stroke physicists' egos and tell us how clever our existing theories are.

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#85

Post by iwwr »

msie wrote: post #69
jamesaguilar wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe explored the universe where America did not. What did they get out of it? (Honest question.) Also, supposing the Higg's Boson did exist and this experiment found it, how much benefit would the average European derived? How much less benefit would people from other countries enjoy?

Don't forget the thousands of jobs created and billions injected into the economy. It's not like the money was dumped into a volcano.

Job creation is just about the worst 'benefit' that can be ascribed to a project. Practically any expenditure can be tied to it. Using this argument just puts your project on par with digging ditches and filling them back again. This is not something a LHC promoter should be proud of, in and of itself.

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#86

Post by cHalgan »

peteretep wrote: post #79
linuxhansl wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously quibbling about $8bn when we happily spend $3500bn on bank bailouts, or $500bn/year for the military (not including the various wars)?

Somehow you added two zeros on to your $3,500bn on bank bailouts! In 2009, it looked like the actual cost would be about $350bn, which is a lot, for sure, but literally an order of magnitude less. According to the treasury department, by 2010, projected cost of TARP was $30-50bn. That's /two/ orders of magnitude out. You also handily miss out the multiplier effects of military spending, and act like the government is…

He is right. 3.45T are total costs of bailout. $2T Emergency Fed Loans (you can give shit-sandwich and exchange it to get real $$). $700B TARP. $300B Hope Now program. $310B Fannie/Freddie and AIG. And ya... we also added $140B Tax Breaks for Banks.

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#87

Post by Eyght »

ugh wrote: post #65
idlewords wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's comforting to hear you say that someone will benefit from the ISS, since so far it's been a dead loss.

Well, I’m not all that convinced of the usefulness of the ISS myself, I was trying to make a more abstract point. If there are significant scientific discoveries to be made on the ISS, the Europeans will also benefit from them.

If you look into commercial space research, you'll find that a lot of it (maybe most) is done under non-disclosure. We usually don't get to hear about it until there is a successful product to show.

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#89

Post by maaku »

guygurari wrote: post #84

I'm a particle physics grad student. My god, what utter nonsense. The only reasonably accurate paragraph is this: "And, more importantly, the lower energy range from 114 to just under 145 billion electron volts, a region of energy that Fermilab has determined, through earlier experiments, may harbor the Higgs, has not been ruled out. But the Higgs is quickly running out of places to hide." The region of higher Higgs…

I am reminded of an observation made by my former boss, a planetary scientist at NASA, about that same statistical effect:

When a new Earth-crossing asteroid or comet is discovered, it's orbit is rarely known with any great certainty. The cross sectional area of the Earth divided by the area of space the object might possibly pass through yields the chance of a collision. With each successive night of observation, the orbital characteristics are determined to greater accuracy, and the cone of potential trajectories is reduced. As a not-so-intuitive result, the reported probability of a doomsday scenario grows geometrically higher with each successive night of observation. In some cases it makes national or world-wide news as the probability of mass extinction grows from 1 in a billion, to 1 in a million, to one in 10,000... Obviously there's a trend there, right? Some journalists think so, then mass hysteria ensues and NASA receives correspondence from mothers asking if they should euthanize their children to protect them from the horrific event (a true story, sadly).

Then at the height of mass hysteria, the next night's observation brings the circle of uncertainty just small enough to exclude the passage of the Earth, and instantly the probability of Armageddon drops to zero. Those media outlets who hyped the doomsday scenario then accuse the scientists of fear mongering (ironic), and the public forgets until the next big object is found looming our way, and the cycle continues.

It's sad, but not unexpected that the general public lacks the mathematical literacy to understand these statistical quirks. It's truly sad, and perhaps even criminal that journalists, and especially science journalists fall victim to those same misconceptions.

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#90

Post by borism »

indrax wrote: post #2

>to spend billions of taxpayer dollars in search of a particle that likely does not exist would have been wasteful This is infuriating. A negative result is a successful experiment. Don't hamper efforts to fund science with the argument that science might figure out it was wrong. Europe explored the universe where America did not.

Funny, cause if the Spanish crown didn't fund Columbuses search for alternative route to East-Indies, we wouldn't be talking about American science right now.
Post reply on HN