Really interesting article: so we're basically back to studying the Aether, right? Or did I get that wrong? The only cause of mass is the particles moving through a vast pervasive invisible field?
CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson
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Re: CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson
#22Amazing, I wonder what this means for creationists and more importantly - our understanding of our universe?
Why should it mean anything special for creationists? God either created the Higgs or he didn't. This science illuminates God. That's all. It's not an argument for or against creationism. (Although if you believe God created the world, then just say it. There is nothing wrong with believing that. But don't hide behind a psudo-science like creationism.)
> Why should it mean anything special for creationists?
I guess maybe this is a misconception based on the media having come up with the stupid label of "the God particle"?
Re: CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson
#23Can someone please dummify this result a little bit? what does this mean for particle physics in the future? does it confirm any theories?
In comic form:
Re: CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson
#24What stood out to me from watching the presentation was the incredible integrity of the physicists involved. The CMS group had 2 sets of data with > 5 sigma significance, but chose to also show weaker data that actually reduced the significance slightly. Consider the enormous effort spent to show that the result was not some background fluke - two separate detectors, running 2 completely different means of detection,…
> So, chose to also show weaker data that actually reduced the significance slightly Well, they are not trying to convince anyone here. They are trying to prove something. So, choosing to hide that data would've been dumb, as the two possible outcomes would have equally interesting I think: proving that the Higgs Boson does exists, or proving that it doesn't. Beyond that, yeah, it's a good day today for science :) !!…
> Well, they are not trying to convince anyone here. They are trying to prove something.
And that's the impressive part. Finding this out cost circa $10 billion. To get that dough, they had to convince a lot of politicians (and hundreds of millions of taxpayers) that this was worth it.
To the general public, a clear result is much more satisfying than, "Well, gosh, the data is ambiguous; we need another $10 billion to get some solid answers." It takes a lot of integrity to go to the lengths they did. I salute them!
Re: CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson
#25I'm going to summarize this based on my limited understanding, and hopefully someone can confirm or deny.
This is important because it confirmed the accuracy of the way we conceptualize the structure of the universe.
That means both the people who start and fund projects know that the basis of modern physics is sound. So the time and money won't be wasted by a surprise "nope, Higgs-boson isn't there" in the middle of a project based on the belief that it is.
Re: CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson
#26I'm going to summarize this based on my limited understanding, and hopefully someone can confirm or deny. This is important because it confirmed the accuracy of the way we conceptualize the structure of the universe. That means both the people who start and fund projects know that the basis of modern physics is sound. So the time and money won't be wasted by a surprise "nope, Higgs-boson isn't there" in the middle of…
Yup, this was the last particle predicted by the Standard Model. In addition to not having any evidence that it existed, we also didn't know exactly how massive it was, or how likely it was to show up in high-energy collisions.
Unfortunately, the Standard Model still doesn't have a good explanation for how quantum mechanics and gravity work together, so we know it's not complete. But at least the particle menagerie seems to be full :)
Re: CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should it mean anything special for creationists? God either created the Higgs or he didn't. This science illuminates God. That's all. It's not an argument for or against creationism. (Although if you believe God created the world, then just say it. There is nothing wrong with believing that. But don't hide behind a psudo-science like creationism.)
> Why should it mean anything special for creationists? I guess maybe this is a misconception based on the media having come up with the stupid label of "the God particle"?
Leon Lederman, an experimental physicist, was the one who first used the term god particle as the title for his book. There are many things to vilify the science media for, but this is not one of them.
Re: CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson
#28Amazing, I wonder what this means for creationists and more importantly - our understanding of our universe?
Is this question a result of the name "God particle" confusing people again? In that case, it is just a stupid name that science journalist, not scientist, decided to go with. It doesn't mean anything at all, and Higg's boson has nothing to do with god.
As I noted above, the media did not come up with the god particle reference.
Re: CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson
#29http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/07/04/hi...
This is a great comment: "Think about it this way. Let’s say you’re at the target range, and the Lone Ranger is shooting at clay pidgins right nearby. Obviously you’ll want to know if he’s shooting silver bullets, right? But you can’t look at them while they’re still tied up in the gun. You can’t look at them after they’ve hit the pidgin. And they’re traveling too fast to study while they’re in flight. The only way you can see if they’re silver bullets is based on how the pidgin gets blown to pieces."
"The Higgs boson has a very short lifetime outside of other subatomic particles. The only way for us to study them is to smash those particles together and see the results of the decay. Based on how the Higgs decays (blows itself to pieces), we can infer its existence."
Re: CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson
#30Really interesting article: so we're basically back to studying the Aether, right? Or did I get that wrong? The only cause of mass is the particles moving through a vast pervasive invisible field?
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we need to be more careful about rejecting theories that simply sound like that of the luminiferous aether on the surface.
FYI aethers can be explained mathematically nowadays.
See: http://www.quora.com/Physics/Besides-maturity-of-model-what-...