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Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson
61–70 of 90 posts
Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson
#62I wonder. If this adds one more trust factor to the standard model, does that mean it'll hold forever? Maybe? There must be some level on which we can baseline our understanding of the universe. Maybe this is it? maybe [1]? [1] http://news.discovery.com/space/we-might-not-live-in-a-holog...
It seems clear that any more complete theory describing particle physics must inevitably reduce to something equivalent to the standard model in the appropriate limits. So in that sense, the standard model will hold forever.
It's exactly the same as saying that Newton's law of gravity will hold forever. It applies very accurately under most circumstances; situations that require us to deal with the complexities of general relativity are quite rare. (GR only begins to differ from Newton's gravity when you have extremely strong gravity or when you need extremely high precision.)
But if you want to really understand the inner workings of the universe, Newtonian gravity won't cut it: you need GR. And it's pretty well established that the standard model can't be the whole story, either: its mathematics eventually break down when the energies get high enough. So there's got to be something else up there... we just aren't sure what it is.
Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> it allowed people to add pictures to their documents. Which very well may be a good definition of technical superiority for the lay man :)
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Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson
#64Earlier 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.
The key innovation of the web was that it used a human editable markup language that allowed links to other content to be intermingled with content. This turned out to be more revolutionary than anyone would have thought.
Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson
#65If anyone wants some solid background on understanding the Higgs, I highly recommend this set of videos from minutephysics:
pt1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Uh5mTxRQcg
Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not a physicist, only someone who enjoys physics, so I may be. I would love to be enlightened if I did misunderstand. My understanding from the statement is that they know there is the effects of a Higgs has been observed. But that this isn't necessarily the Higgs which fits into the Standard Model. I understand there are other models which may be considered but I thought that there were specific conditions whic…
>this isn't necessarily the Higgs which fits into the Standard Model We know that the standard model is "wrong" -- it breaks down at high enough energies. But it's valid at lower energies; it works for the stuff we can actually observe. And it requires a Higgs field to make sense. If they discover a particle that fills this role, that's discovering "the" Higgs. It doesn't matter if it turns out that the Higgs sector…
Do you know any specifics of how the standard model breaks down at high enough energies?
Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson
#67don't ever read beyond mass media headlines for HEP; just go here instead: http://profmattstrassler.com
Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson
#68Another science news that will be disconfirmed in 1-2 days?
No, this one is actual science, this time it's not from some dubious guy with a philosophical agenda. "Finding" the Higgs is a prolonged statistical process involving tons of data that need to be crunched and the experiment itself also needs to run for a long time in order to yield this data. Physicists have been talking about a strong signal indicating the existence of the Higgs for quite a while now, so its existen…
I was hoping that the neutrinos were actually going faster than light. Confirming established theories is boring, but breaking them is exciting.
Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson
#69The physics involved is fascinating, although a true appreciation of what a Higgs Boson is would take years (i.e. most of a PhD). The organisation of such a vast data-processing task has surely brought about many discoveries in "big-data" and parallel computing that are not directly related to the discoveries in physics. Much like the research into the magnets that power the accelerator has led to new MRI machines. T…
Are there any predictions for possible daily-life-affecting spin-offs from the new physics itself, rather than just from the engineering advances made in the search? Or do the energies involved preclude any direct practical uses?
That's a nearly impossible question really. Who could have predicted that Einstein's research would eventually lead to cellular phones?
Re: Physicists Say They Have Found A Higgs Boson
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
>this isn't necessarily the Higgs which fits into the Standard Model We know that the standard model is "wrong" -- it breaks down at high enough energies. But it's valid at lower energies; it works for the stuff we can actually observe. And it requires a Higgs field to make sense. If they discover a particle that fills this role, that's discovering "the" Higgs. It doesn't matter if it turns out that the Higgs sector…
Do you know any specifics of how the standard model breaks down at high enough energies?
The one we know for sure about is related to gravity -- you normally ignore it in particle physics, but there's a point where you can't do that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_scale
Now, it's quite likely interesting stuff happens before that point! (Such as the extra Higgs suggested by supersymmetry.) And there are also other, complicated reasons to suspect that the Standard Model breaks down, to suspect that it is really what we call an "effective field theory".
That's all ignoring issues like dark matter or the neutrino mass, which are not predicted by the standard model. But it's kind of interesting that the model (in a certain sense) naturally limits its own predictions.