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Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson

nytimes.com

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Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson

#31

Post by Aardwolf »

berntb wrote: post #16
eranation wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To those who forgot, the web as we know it was also pretty much invented at CERN [1] so anyone who is against "science for science's sake" is indeed missing a major point. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web#1...

I agree with your general point, but your example is doubtful. Gopher existed before WWW and filled the same niche. It wasn't as elegant, but it (or something else) would have grown up without WWW. The reason, in my cynical opinion, why the web took over from Gopher was not that it was technically superior, but that it allowed people to add pictures to their documents.

Exactly, and we all know the internet cannot be the internet if it doesn't have cat pictures.

Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson

#32

Post by btilly »

raverbashing wrote: post #18
Retric wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of me is rather skeptical that the giant mound of assumptions about hardware, software, and physics backing this discovery is correct. However, I have a lot more faith in them then I do in most human endeavors and I fundamentally don't understand what's going on. Which I find to be an odd feeling.

Their assumptions are validated by everything else working and showing up as expected Still, I have a similar feeling, that there may be some hidden 'tuning' to make things match, or some assumptions or values that have been erroneously determined or set.

Many of the parameters are actually not specified by the theory, and have to be fitted by experiment. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renormalization for one of the reasons why.

Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson

#33

Post by gammarator »

The question in my mind is: is there anything beyond the Higgs? Particle theorists hoped the LHC would find whole new families of particles supporting any number of exotic theories. If the LHC finds the Higgs and nothing else, there will be a huge exodus from the field: given the cost of the experiment, a bigger one will be a hard sell in this climate.

Could be a good time to pick up some physics PhDs for your data science team.

Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson

#34

Post by evanb »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #26
huhtenberg wrote: post #3

A physicist friend of mine said, half jokingly, that with that much money poured into the project they had no other option but to find that damn boson.

Sort of related question, which may sound a bit rubbish since I don't really know the physics or their scientific method at that scale, but were they doing enough experiments that they'd have eventually said it couldn't exist if they never found it for some amount of time? Or was it always something that could only be proven, not disproven?

The Higgs was not guaranteed to be there, and its absence would have been obvious and discoverable. If they'd seen no signal by now everyone would likely be comfortable saying that there was no standard model Higgs.

However, SOMETHING needs to break electroweak symmetry---this is known because the W and Z gauge bosons are massive, and it isn't possible to formulate a consistent gauge theory with massive bosons without symmetry breaking. Whether it was the Higgs mechanism, or some technicolor (strongly-coupled, QCD-like) theory, or something else entirely was not well constrained before the machine turned on. With that in mind, it's clear that it might be that what they found is not just a standard model Higgs, but one of a number of higher-energy excitations. If that's true then the Standard Model is not, strictly speaking, correct, though it can be thought of as an effective field theory ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_field_theory ).

Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson

#35

Post by shardling »

randomdrake wrote: post #7

With big science news like this, it's always best to go to the source[0] to avoid sensationalism. Of note, is the following statement which isn't getting repeated much in the mainstream news sources: " It remains an open question, however, whether this is the Higgs boson of the Standard Model of particle physics, or possibly the lightest of several bosons predicted in some theories that go beyond the Standard Model.…

You're misunderstanding the quoted passage. In either case it would be the Higgs that they were searching for.

The uncertainty is about the structure that exists beyond the standard model. Some sort of Higgs is still necessary in almost any extension to this model, which is why everyone was so damn certain it would be found.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson#Alternative_models

Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson

#37

Post by shardling »

btilly wrote: post #32
raverbashing wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their assumptions are validated by everything else working and showing up as expected Still, I have a similar feeling, that there may be some hidden 'tuning' to make things match, or some assumptions or values that have been erroneously determined or set.

Many of the parameters are actually not specified by the theory, and have to be fitted by experiment. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renormalization for one of the reasons why.

I don't think that renormalization has much to do with this! :P

It's enough to say that the standard model has to have some input from the real world -- mostly the masses of the particles and their mixing angles. Renormalization just makes it harder to talk about what a particle's mass "really" is; it doesn't really increase the number of parameters in the theory.

Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson

#38

Post by SoftwareMaven »

How do you give the discovery of the Higgs a Nobel prize? Particularly in experimental particle physics, the ability to give a nobel prize (even after discounting grad students :) seems impossible today. The number of people who have to be part of any "discovery" is huge. It seems like the prize would then become the prize for who had the most political (office and governmental) sway on the team.

Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson

#39

Post by senko »

harshreality wrote: post #19
randomdrake wrote: post #7

With big science news like this, it's always best to go to the source[0] to avoid sensationalism. Of note, is the following statement which isn't getting repeated much in the mainstream news sources: " It remains an open question, however, whether this is the Higgs boson of the Standard Model of particle physics, or possibly the lightest of several bosons predicted in some theories that go beyond the Standard Model.…

Science is pretty boring to most people, who aren't interested in science per se but only want news bites for use in casual conversation. Media distorts scientific claims in order to appeal to a wider audience and make more money. God Particle Found! News at eleventy eleven!eleventy!

I'm wondering whether some (or rather, how many) people will now conclude that there's a proof God exists, since scientists have found "God particle".

Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson

#40

Post by bobwaycott »

randomdrake wrote: post #7

With big science news like this, it's always best to go to the source[0] to avoid sensationalism. Of note, is the following statement which isn't getting repeated much in the mainstream news sources: " It remains an open question, however, whether this is the Higgs boson of the Standard Model of particle physics, or possibly the lightest of several bosons predicted in some theories that go beyond the Standard Model.…

Well, to be fair, does the sourced NYT article not say exactly what the quote indicates--specifically to the point of referencing the quote itself? Even the article's title says it is a, not the, Higgs boson that is found. Moreover, the article also says "it remains an "open question," CERN said in a statement, whether this is the Higgs boson that was expected in the original formulation, or possibly the lightest of several predicted in some theories that go beyond that model."

Sensationalism where?

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