RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence) • Hacker News Board

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#61

Post by delackner » Wed, Aug 31, 2011, 4:40 AM UTC

jamesaguilar wrote: post #42

bane wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has all blue sky research in history resulted in massive benefits decades down the line? That's the wrong question. "Has blue sky research in history resulted in massive benefits decades down the line?" is a better one and the answer is a most definitive yes, many many many times the amount of money put into it, on the order of trillions of dollars. Do each and every blue sky pure R&D experiment yield such results? H…

> That's the wrong question. I asked the question I meant to ask. The point is not that we should stop doing blue sky research if examples exist where it has produced no benefit. It is quite obvious that blue sky research has been useful to us over the course of time. That fact does not give anything called blue sky research carte blanche to spend taxpayer money. The point is to weigh the likely benefits of all the v…

The difficulty is that much of the time, blue sky research projects appear at the time they are being funded, to have absolutely no known possible applications, nor any sense that future applications will come along. It is not possible in the present to know what the benefit will be. This is basically the definition of basic research, and if we just said "ok, no funding for stuff that has no known application" then we would be sitting around with very very smooth wheels on our carriages.

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#62

Post by idlewords » Wed, Aug 31, 2011, 4:41 AM UTC

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #30

zzzmarcus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dark matter has not been observed, hence the name. We know something is there, but we don't know what is is and we have not seen it.

Its gravitational effects have been observed, that is how we know it is there. Nobody has seen it, but little in the sky is actually accessible via visible wavelengths.

I guess it depends on your definition of 'seen'. Certainly the evidence is very unambiguous:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/21/...

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#63

Post by idlewords » Wed, Aug 31, 2011, 4:42 AM UTC

ugh wrote: post #38

tzs wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe explored the universe where America did not I guess you never heard of a little project called the International Space Station? The SSC was supposed to be a $4 billion project. That's what Congress was told in 1987. By 1993, it was projected as a $12 billion project. Guess where that $8 billion would have come from if the SSC project had continued? From other science projects--and most likely the ISS would h…

You could call it division of labor. The US will obviously benefit from any discoveries the LHC makes, Europe will also benefit from the ISS.

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

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#64

Post by idlewords » Wed, Aug 31, 2011, 4:46 AM UTC

andrewflnr wrote: post #48

Maybe its irrational, but kind of hope they don't find it. It's almost gratifying, definitely exhilarating, to know that particle physics is still a fresh frontier with plenty of territory to be discovered. Supersymmetric particles seem to be unlikely too. It seems like we're almost back at the drawing board. So if it turns out that it doesn't exist, where do we go from here? What are the alternative theories? It's b…

Particle physics has been chugging along for thirty years without a major discovery. Everything fits the Standard Model to a depressing degree. The worst-case scenario is that we'll actually find a Higgs boson in the expected range... and then nothing else.

It's perfectly possible that further interesting physics takes place at energy scales too far beyond the reach of any accelerator we can build in the next few hundred years.

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#65

Post by ugh » Wed, Aug 31, 2011, 4:46 AM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #63

ugh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could call it division of labor. The US will obviously benefit from any discoveries the LHC makes, Europe will also benefit from the ISS.

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.

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#66

Post by viscanti » Wed, Aug 31, 2011, 4:49 AM UTC

jamesaguilar wrote: post #27

icarus_drowning wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it would be nice to know where mass comes from, but that fact absent any useful application (or a probability of a useful application) is of limited value to me. I guess if you don't see potential applications of understanding where mass comes from, we're at a bit of an impasse here. It is difficult (if not impossible) to make predictions about what the discovery will bring, but the mere possibility that…

> . . . we're at a bit of an impasse here. Only because I don't know the science behind it. I asked the question to be informed. Everyone is so busy trying to show that I am wrong to ask the question that no one has taken time to answer it. What potential applications are there of knowing where mass comes from in the level of detail we are speaking about here (i.e. the proof of the SM or the suggestion of one of the…

There's a lot of potential applications for mass manipulation, if it's possible. You'll be hard pressed to find specific examples, because a lot of them depend on how mass manipulation would be possible.

Potential applications could be in energy generation or the creation of ultra light materials, which could open the doors for affordable space travel (or just better more fuel efficient travel here on earth). Understanding how mass works is one of the final puzzle pieces in physics, and could lead to countless breakthroughs in a number of areas. It's not a trivial theoretical pursuit.

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#67

Post by caf » Wed, Aug 31, 2011, 4:51 AM UTC

jamesaguilar wrote: post #50

noonespecial wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value is not really in the finding, but more in the seeking. It's the surprise discoveries that happen along the way that have huge practical applications, not just what we thought we were looking for. You have to seek to find. Even if they are on the wrong track it's better to seek than not.

> You have to seek to find. Even if they are on the wrong track it's better to seek than not. I guess this sentiment, which is seen throughout this thread, is my main objection to the whole thing. This is spiritualism, pure and simple. Science, no matter about what, is good, because it's science. We know this because of our history, and we embrace it like a totem. What I wish is that we had a scientific mindset about…

The basic underlying assumption is that more knowledge is inherently more valuable than less knowledge, even if you don't have a specific application in mind for that knowledge.

How many people could have forseen GPS recievers as a consequence of General Relativity?

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#68

Post by tzs » Wed, Aug 31, 2011, 4:52 AM UTC

linuxhansl wrote: post #54

tzs wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe explored the universe where America did not I guess you never heard of a little project called the International Space Station? The SSC was supposed to be a $4 billion project. That's what Congress was told in 1987. By 1993, it was projected as a $12 billion project. Guess where that $8 billion would have come from if the SSC project had continued? From other science projects--and most likely the ISS would h…

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)?

Budgets tend to be somewhat compartmentalized. If a project in compartment X goes over its budget, that tends to come at the expense of other things in compartment X.

$8 billion was a huge amount in the science compartment. It is completely irrelevant that some other compartments might have had much bigger budgets.

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#69

Post by msie » Wed, Aug 31, 2011, 4:59 AM UTC

jamesaguilar wrote: post #7

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.

> 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.

Re: RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence)

#70

Post by hypersoar » Wed, Aug 31, 2011, 5:08 AM UTC

This is rather beside the point, but why must they call it the "God Particle"? According to Wikipedia, it was coined in a popsci book when the writer's editor wouldn't let him call them "goddamn particles". So now we're stuck with this hollow, cliché, uninformative phrase for eternity.