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Tags cern , higgs boson , physics

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Old 3rd July 2012, 12:05 PM   #41
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Originally Posted by Darat View Post
It is hardly surprising that the scientists haven't found the Higgs boson, isn't it meant to be something to do with gravity? Yet they try to detect it in a vacuum!
.
Gravity can't be worked-around very easily.
It gets everything all the time, especially in a lab, even a lab on the ISS.
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Old 3rd July 2012, 12:08 PM   #42
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Already I am concerned that the Higgs Boson announcement will lead to a rush of "fat jokes," if it hasn't done so already. Get ready for wit like this:

"Scientists say that the Higgs Boson is the particle that gives a body its weight. Looks like Chris Christie has discovered a whole bunch of Higgs Bosons already!"
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Old 3rd July 2012, 12:30 PM   #43
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Originally Posted by quarky View Post
Hence, dog.
Hmmm, "The barking boson", I like it.
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Old 3rd July 2012, 12:36 PM   #44
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Laboratory accidentally posts video heralding discovery of a new particle on its website ahead of scheduled announcement:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...?newsfeed=true

-- Roger
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Old 3rd July 2012, 05:14 PM   #45
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So its mass is 100 times the mass of a proton, but it doesn't interact with normal matter.

So the Higgs is dark matter, right? The dark matter question has been answered.
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Old 3rd July 2012, 05:16 PM   #46
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
So its mass is 100 times the mass of a proton, but it doesn't interact with normal matter.

So the Higgs is dark matter, right? The dark matter question has been answered.
No. Dark matter needs to be stable. A stable Higgs wouldn't decay into detectable channels.
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Old 3rd July 2012, 05:50 PM   #47
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Originally Posted by quarky View Post
I suppose there will be a Satan particle as well?
From what I've read the super-symmetry experiment is coming up empty, so apparently not. Super-symmetric particles (sparticles?) are apparently proving obvious by their absence.

Of course the super-symmetry squad may be terminally compromised by Satanist infiltration, it's not for me to say. It could be down to something as simple as the god particle having better hair.
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Old 3rd July 2012, 05:52 PM   #48
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Originally Posted by edd View Post
No. Dark matter needs to be stable. A stable Higgs wouldn't decay into detectable channels.
How stable though? Is a half-life of a trillion years stable enough to account for dark matter but still detectable (barely).

ETA: It seems to me like, to make an analogy, that there's a big part of the jigsaw puzzle of physics that has been missing its piece, and now we've found a piece that looks like it's the right size and shape, and it just remains to put the piece into the puzzle and see if it fits well enough.
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Old 3rd July 2012, 07:18 PM   #49
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
How stable though? Is a half-life of a trillion years stable enough to account for dark matter but still detectable (barely).

ETA: It seems to me like, to make an analogy, that there's a big part of the jigsaw puzzle of physics that has been missing its piece, and now we've found a piece that looks like it's the right size and shape, and it just remains to put the piece into the puzzle and see if it fits well enough.
Why do you mention a hypothetical half life many times the age of the universe and the piece we found that looks the right size and shape, which means amongst other things a halflife measured in the tiniest fractions of seconds, like you're talking about the same particle?
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Old 3rd July 2012, 07:21 PM   #50
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For anyone interested in a pretty reasonable layman's explanation, the Guardian has a pretty neat, quick video on explaining the Higgs field and Higgs boson:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/vi...gs-boson-video

I particularly like the lunch tray with the ping pong balls and sugar. Nice visual
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Old 3rd July 2012, 07:43 PM   #51
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Originally Posted by MattusMaximus View Post
Despite the fact that I hate the headline ("God particle" ) I am very, very interested to see what this is all about. Looks like a big announcement coming on Wednesday...

Anyone here got an inside scoop on this?
Great!, I've got something to blame next time I gain weight
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Old 3rd July 2012, 08:22 PM   #52
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Originally Posted by Dragoonster View Post
Who was that idiot physicist who coined the term? If he ever won a Nobel he should now be stripped of it.
Originally Posted by mike3 View Post
Apparently, this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Lederman

And yes, he won a Nobel.
Originally Posted by a_unique_person View Post
From what I have read, it was originally called the 'goddam' particle, but it wasn't seen to be a polite way to refer to it. Hence the slight change.
Lederman appears to have coined both terms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Particle_(book)

Quote:
Lederman said he gave the Higgs boson the nickname "The God Particle" because the particle is "so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive,"[5][6][7] but jokingly added that a second reason was because "the publisher wouldn't let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing."[8][9]
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Old 3rd July 2012, 09:02 PM   #53
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Originally Posted by Turgor View Post
Why do you mention a hypothetical half life many times the age of the universe and the piece we found that looks the right size and shape, which means amongst other things a halflife measured in the tiniest fractions of seconds, like you're talking about the same particle?
Sorry. Perhaps I've misunderstood what this thing is. I'm only a layman.

So, the Higgs boson only exists for a fraction of a second before decomposing?

ETA: I looked it up. Sorry, never mind.

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

Quote:
Like other massive particles (e.g. the top quark and W and Z bosons), Higgs bosons created in particle accelerators decay long before they reach any of the detectors. However, the Standard Model precisely predicts the possible modes of decay and their probabilities. This allows events in which a Higgs was created to be identified by examining the decay products.
ETA2: But if the Higgs boson is that last particle of the standard model and it doesn't account for dark matter, then dark matter must be something outside the standard model, right?
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Old 3rd July 2012, 09:27 PM   #54
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Originally Posted by Puppycow View Post
How stable though? Is a half-life of a trillion years stable enough to account for dark matter but still detectable (barely).
The Higgs boson is an unstable (something like 10^-25 seconds) particle whose interactions are, in the context of the Standard Model, 100% known.

Dark matter is thought to be some sort of stable or nearly-stable particle---more than a trillion years, i.e. 10^+20 seconds, is probably the right ballpark. It's not described in the Standard Model. We have a forest of hypotheses about what interactions it might have, but no idea if any of these hypotheses are true.

Quote:
ETA: It seems to me like, to make an analogy, that there's a big part of the jigsaw puzzle of physics that has been missing its piece, and now we've found a piece that looks like it's the right size and shape, and it just remains to put the piece into the puzzle and see if it fits well enough.
That's not a bad analogy. The Standard Model tells us to expect a heavyish, spin-1 particle, which couples to mass, which is produced in thus-and-such collisions, which decays to heavy particles and occasionally photons, etc.. We go to LHC and (if the rumors are true) we've seen a heavy particle, we've seen it produced in the expected ballpark, we've seen two of its decay options. It seems like a likely fit for the known "Higgs" hole in the Standard Model ... but we haven't yet placed it securely in that hole. One extra bump or divot could mean a mis-fit.
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Old 3rd July 2012, 10:09 PM   #55
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New reuters article from a few minutes ago. Some new info in it supposedly.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...86008K20120704
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Old 3rd July 2012, 11:53 PM   #56
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Watch Live: Higgs Boson Announcement

http://www.havewefoundthehiggsyet.com/
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Old 4th July 2012, 12:33 AM   #57
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CERN live webcast - the source of the announcement - on now.

http://webcast.web.cern.ch/webcast/play_higgs.html
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Old 4th July 2012, 12:38 AM   #58
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Nature also has an article on it:
http://www.nature.com/news/physicist...-higgs-1.10932
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Old 4th July 2012, 12:43 AM   #59
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Damn - I was hoping that it wasn't found - because it's getting rather boring these days in physics what with the world behaving as we thought it did!
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Old 4th July 2012, 12:50 AM   #60
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I see that they are still waiting on the results from Atlas, I expect the results from Atlas will be really, really big and really, really impressive and have great hair.
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Old 4th July 2012, 12:52 AM   #61
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Having problems running the cast - anyone want to me fill me in?
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Old 4th July 2012, 12:55 AM   #62
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ETA: that was the CMS presentation's conclusion.

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Old 4th July 2012, 01:03 AM   #63
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CMS results:

The two high-resolution, actually-see-a-peak searches (Higgs decaying to two photons, and Higgs decaying to two Z-bosons, both decaying to ee or mu mu) combine for a 5+ sigma discovery. Clear as a bell, you can see the Higgs peaks with the naked eye. In the ZZ channel that means what looked like (eyeballing my memory of the viewgraph) 7-8 Higgs-like events on top of a nearly zero background.

Several the other channels, of the sort that see broad mass-insensitive excesses, have slightly lower-than-expected counts, which pulls the all-combined discovery number to 4.9 sigma.

The ATLAS talk is ongoing ...
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Old 4th July 2012, 01:13 AM   #64
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Live blog of the CERN talks:

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2012/0...inar-liveblog/
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Old 4th July 2012, 01:32 AM   #65
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Wouldn't it be ironic that in the year of the Earth ending (thanks Mayans!), we discover how the universe works?
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Old 4th July 2012, 01:39 AM   #66
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Fantastic. Perhaps particle physics will be front page news for the first time in decades.
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Old 4th July 2012, 01:41 AM   #67
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ATLAS is also at 5 sigma! Aaaaaaand I'm off to bed.
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Old 4th July 2012, 01:43 AM   #68
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There have already been "the End of Physics" blogs.

Aarrrgggh
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Old 4th July 2012, 01:44 AM   #69
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Maybe they'll be able to draw us a picture of this "particle". PMSL
This nonsense should be in the conspiracy theory section along with black holes, dark matter and gravity.
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Old 4th July 2012, 01:54 AM   #70
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The concluding slide of the CERN presentation:


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Old 4th July 2012, 02:04 AM   #71
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Originally Posted by Orphia Nay View Post
The concluding slide of the CERN presentation:

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w...RN040712-3.gif
So they still haven't found what they were looking for, just like Bono
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Old 4th July 2012, 02:25 AM   #72
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Originally Posted by geni View Post
If they did do you think there is the faintest possibility that they would say anything? Media management generaly isn't a strong point in science but the LHC mob have shown a degree of competence in that area and are well aware that any rumours anywhere online will find their way to the the media fairly quickly.
ahem

Originally Posted by jadebox View Post
Laboratory accidentally posts video heralding discovery of a new particle on its website ahead of scheduled announcement:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...?newsfeed=true

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Old 4th July 2012, 02:56 AM   #73
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Originally Posted by BobHaulk View Post
So they still haven't found what they were looking for, just like Bono
No. More like "They're pretty sure they've found what they're looking for but they want to know more about it". Not aware of a U2 song by that name.
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Old 4th July 2012, 03:05 AM   #74
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They seem confident they've found A Higgs boson, but just aren't 100% certain whether it's THE Higgs boson, or whether there is just one Higgs boson.
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Old 4th July 2012, 03:10 AM   #75
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These aren't the bosons you're looking for...
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Old 4th July 2012, 03:11 AM   #76
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Next time they go looking for a new particle how can they go one better?

I predict the Beatles particle.
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Old 4th July 2012, 03:14 AM   #77
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The higgsteria-bias

Scepticme must try to undermine the "Higgsteria-bias".

Higgsteria-bias = "Because of all our efforts, because of the million dollar project, we must find that Higgsparticle. The standard model must be right, because a lot of money, certificates and titles are depending on it. Otherwise, we stare in the unknown."

Higgsteria-quotes:

"We are closer....", "it could be the Higgsparticle". "It's a new particle, it must be that Higgsparticle. etc..."

If a pseudoscientist would mention 'it could be this' or 'it could be that', the critical thinker would answer: 'it could be this or that' is no science at all.

So, criticism to undermine it, instead of searching for comfirmation (confirmationbias because of Higgsteria) is the critical weapon against the Higgsteria, to search for the truth. The more Higgsteria, the more 'falsification-tests' needed.
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Old 4th July 2012, 03:17 AM   #78
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Originally Posted by Brown View Post
Already I am concerned that the Higgs Boson announcement will lead to a rush of "fat jokes," if it hasn't done so already. Get ready for wit like this:

"Scientists say that the Higgs Boson is the particle that gives a body its weight. Looks like Chris Christie has discovered a whole bunch of Higgs Bosons already!"
Yo' momma's so fat, she gives the Higgs Boson its weight.

Dave
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Old 4th July 2012, 03:27 AM   #79
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Originally Posted by Maartenn100 View Post
If a pseudoscientist would mention 'it could be this' or 'it could be that', the critical thinker would answer: 'it could be this or that' is no science at all.
You are getting confused between conservatism and speculation.
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Old 4th July 2012, 03:34 AM   #80
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Originally Posted by lionking View Post
Fantastic. Perhaps particle physics will be front page news for the first time in decades.
It's been the top 'top story' on Google News all day.
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