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Peter Higgs, physicist who discovered Higgs boson, has died

theguardian.com

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Re: Peter Higgs, physicist who discovered Higgs boson, has died

#51

Post by _ys5m »

cdelsolar wrote: post #48
dotnet00 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents had a hard time explaining my dad's job to me, so they just told me he was a scientist because he had a masters in physics (he was a diplomat). Like any little kid, my parents were my heroes, so of course this led me to becoming obsessed with scientists and reading up on science stuff, eg trying to read my sister's university textbooks. I developed a hobby of reading up on and sharing factoids I found onli…

how is ndt a fake/fraud?

He switched PhD programs from Texas to Columbia and some people thought he took too long or something

Re: Peter Higgs, physicist who discovered Higgs boson, has died

#53

Post by cm2187 »

dotnet00 wrote: post #12

The story of how Higgs predicted his mechanism was part of what got me into physics as a kid. It fit 10 year old me's obsession with the 'soft-spoken genius' archetype perfectly and formed a pillar in my belief that 'genius' was made through hard work (and some amount of luck) rather than being born with it. The announcement of the detection at the LHC is a core memory of mine, I still distinctly remember where I was…

Did you succeed with your parents? It's hard to be excited about theoretical physics as a layman. It has been a long time since any of those theories had any practical application.

Re: Peter Higgs, physicist who discovered Higgs boson, has died

#54

Post by neom »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #9

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Higgs

Just to add a couple more good Higgs resources courtesy of the fine folks at PBS Space Time:

How the Higgs Mechanism Give Things Mass - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0Q4UAiKacw

Could the Higgs Boson Lead Us to Dark Matter? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2yLMY6Mpw8

Where Is The Center of The Universe? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOLHtIWLkHg

(For me personally, I gave a massive sad sign when I saw this on the homepage. I really liked him a lot for a few reasons: He did his thinking in isolation, for a long period of time walking around the Scottish highlands . He was a keen disciple of interdisciplinary thought being pivotal to innovation. He appears to have imagined things and thought about things in a pretty weird way for his time, although that might seem obvious, how well he grappled with the reality of weirdness is exemplary. 힝)

Re: Peter Higgs, physicist who discovered Higgs boson, has died

#55

Post by dotnet00 »

cdelsolar wrote: post #48
dotnet00 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents had a hard time explaining my dad's job to me, so they just told me he was a scientist because he had a masters in physics (he was a diplomat). Like any little kid, my parents were my heroes, so of course this led me to becoming obsessed with scientists and reading up on science stuff, eg trying to read my sister's university textbooks. I developed a hobby of reading up on and sharing factoids I found onli…

how is ndt a fake/fraud?

He gives me a similar feeling to say, SBF did prior to the FTX collapse. This isn't to say he's a scammer like SBF, but rather that he has a similar hard to describe 'dishonest' air around him, where I feel he's deliberately trying to make himself seem smarter than he is for the sake of the attention alone, which makes me distrustful of him. I'm not really sure how to describe the feeling besides "attention-seeking charismatic fakes/frauds", but as another example, Bill Nye also gives me the same feeling.

His X shenanigans don't help either, where he has a reputation of engagement farming by posting dumb somewhat condescending "but akschually" type comments on things people are enjoying. Eg, when the last American total solar eclipse happened in 2017, he posted something along the lines of "ignore people when they tell you eclipses are rare", it's technically correct that eclipses happen fairly often, but he obviously had to know that what makes them exciting is that they're rare for the location the viewers are at. It's become somewhat of a meme to call someone NDT when they're being a buzzkill.

Re: Peter Higgs, physicist who discovered Higgs boson, has died

#56

Post by dotnet00 »

rmbyrro wrote: post #44
dotnet00 wrote: post #12

The story of how Higgs predicted his mechanism was part of what got me into physics as a kid. It fit 10 year old me's obsession with the 'soft-spoken genius' archetype perfectly and formed a pillar in my belief that 'genius' was made through hard work (and some amount of luck) rather than being born with it. The announcement of the detection at the LHC is a core memory of mine, I still distinctly remember where I was…

With a layperson in mind, curious about physics, do you recommend any resource (hopefully not too math-intensive) to learn how the higgs boson actually "gives mass" to stuff?

Since you said 'not too math-intensive', I figure you're fine with getting more details and background than usual just without having to parse equations, in which case PBS Space Time is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0Q4UAiKacw

Re: Peter Higgs, physicist who discovered Higgs boson, has died

#57

Post by ducttapecrown »

bee_rider wrote: post #11
ajross wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same is true of every other boson, except arguably photons in the classical limit (e.g. you can put a multimeter on an antenna and detect them "non-probabalistically"). The Higgs detection is sound. A quick check of wikipedia says 5.9 sigma. Good enough for me, anyway.

> e.g. you can put a multimeter on an antenna and detect them "non-probabalistically" I think I get what you mean, but we should be clear—every measurement is probabilistic, right? We can measure photons with low enough inaccuracy that we don’t bother quantifying the probability that they might not exist. But, it is actually on some philosophical level a difference of degree, not type. I’m pretty sure.

What does it mean for a measurement to be probabilistic?

I'm a math grad student, so still a layman, but here's the way I think about it: Every particle travels over every possible path as the wave spreads out. Once you measure the particle, it tells you a path.

So the measured value of the particle is probabilistic, not the measurement.

Re: Peter Higgs, physicist who discovered Higgs boson, has died

#58

Post by ducttapecrown »

marblar wrote: post #28
golergka wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any evidence of any physical phenomena is probabilistic. And with Bell's inequalities, we know that for a fact.

> We know that for a fact Probably.

The only true facts are the useless tautologies... Sad for the theory of knowledge, truly...

Re: Peter Higgs, physicist who discovered Higgs boson, has died

#59

Post by ducttapecrown »

ColinWright wrote: post #39
anthony__j wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

haha, that's pretty clever. makes you wonder if fermat was doing a similar prank with his margins

It's generally believed that Fermat thought he had a proof, but probably almost immediately remembered that not everything is a Unique Factorization Domain, so the "obvious proof" fails. Then he didn't bother returning to correct the error. So no, probably not. (+) I should go and learn more about the specifics of this to make sure I'm relating it correctly. EDIT: (++) OK, here's what I was thinking about: https://ma…

I just recently learned that the note in Fermat's margin was published posthumously by his son! So Fermat never necessarily publicly claimed to have a proof. So I would imagine you're absolutely correct.

Re: Peter Higgs, physicist who discovered Higgs boson, has died

#60

Post by dotnet00 »

cm2187 wrote: post #53
dotnet00 wrote: post #12

The story of how Higgs predicted his mechanism was part of what got me into physics as a kid. It fit 10 year old me's obsession with the 'soft-spoken genius' archetype perfectly and formed a pillar in my belief that 'genius' was made through hard work (and some amount of luck) rather than being born with it. The announcement of the detection at the LHC is a core memory of mine, I still distinctly remember where I was…

Did you succeed with your parents? It's hard to be excited about theoretical physics as a layman. It has been a long time since any of those theories had any practical application.

They still aren't all that interested in this stuff, and on their advice I ended up studying computer engineering instead of physics, but I've still found myself working at one of the other labs with big particle accelerators, as a researcher who can link the computing side with enough of the physics side to work with physicists.

They don't fully understand what I do and don't really care too much about the details, but when they saw pictures of where I worked, they did immediately bring up that I used to go on and on about something that seemed similar, so they at least did understand what I liked.

I guess the closest they get to being interested in theoretical physics is that my Dad, having run through his stash of novels during covid, eventually read my left-behind copy of A Brief History of Time, and occasionally quotes it when he's in the mood to wax philosophical. My Mom instead tries to keep up with my other interest of space exploration/astronomy.

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