Looks like scientists in Geneva are 91% certain that they've actually found the Higgs Boson! Very cool! I hope they're right.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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My "eek" face in my first post on the thread is a link to a BBC News article on it. I looked on Nature.com for a more in-depth article, but didn't find one. I expect it must be there though.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Yeah, that's the one I linked to above. Maybe I shouldn't have used an emoticon as a link; those can be easy to miss.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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9% chance of it being an artifact of background noise doesn't come vaguely close to a good chance of it being a Higgs. Doesn't even vaguely approach a 91% chance of anything at all having occurred.
This is a well after the fact end-of-run finding. End-of-run means that the equipment is operating at energies on the very edge of being unreliable. So everytime they shut the accelerators down to upgrade the equipment, you have physicists crawling out of the woodwork proclaiming that they've discovered mass of the current favorite StandardTheory "god particle" or an exotic particle confirming their personal favorite beyondStandard theory.
After past similar shutdowns, there were claims of Z/W/neutrino/etc mass ("god particle"s), gravitinos/selectrons/etc (Supersymmetry), axions (WIMPs), technirho/technipion (Technicolor), etc. None of such sightings being confirmed after the accelerators were brought back on-line with the capability of operating reliably in that formerly top-energy range.
A case of "Why not publish and be the center of conversation for a couple of years cuz nobody can call me an idiot during the time that the accelerator's down and can't be used to test my finding. And I'll be forever famous as first discoverer if I'm accidentally right."
So from past history, I'd place probability of this having been a true Higgs sighting at less than 9%. Besides, the mass/energy is in a low probability-of-discovery region between competing formerly-strong-but-now-disproven theories and strong-but-still-unproven theories. Doesn't prove that the Higgs mass wasn't discovered, to be later confirmed by more reliable machinery: just indicates that the probability is lower than claimed.
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From CERN's excitement about the latest results at the LargeHadronCollider, looks like Fermilab's end-of-run may very well have hit upon a real InterestingParticle.
Posting mostly cuz CosmicLog had a very clean discussion about what physicists are looking for in the HiggsHunt. If the ~140GeV"bump" becomes clearer at higher-energy LHC runs, we've either got a Higgs or a beyondStandardModel particle.*
And the beyondStandard would be the more Interesting of the two. The problem with the StandardModel as it now exists is that it's so good at explaining-what-it-does-explain that it doesn't provide a way to look at the StandardModel's inner workings. So there are a LOT of unresolved questions about the how&why it comes up with the answers it does. If the StandardModel were an engine, finding a beyondStandard particle would be similar to breaking the engine block. It'd let us better see how the darn thing really works.
* Or some interesting engineering-physics "we've never considered before" inregard to artefact^creation since it occurred at the same energy level at two different colliders using different detection systems. ^ An artefact arises from a defect within the machinery or detectors or detection algorithms themselves producing an otherwise non-existing result.
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And may I say that SpellCheck is written by idiots to con the gullible. "Art i fact" indeed. The bloody morons can't even spell 'collider'.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Not talking about programmers. Venting about lexicographers. I s'pose there is a minisculely slight reason to correct 'artefact', but suggesting I correct 'kilometre' is beyond stupid well into being malicious, jingoism for the sake of being jingoistic.
Though ifn ya wanna talk about programmers (or rather, their bosses), why do search engines assume that one isn't specificly looking for a misspelling? When I'm looking for 'powerplant', I'm deliberately trying to exclude 'power plant'. When I'm looking for 'theatre', I'm deliberately trying to exclude 'theater'. I don't mind hints that I might have misspelled a word with suggested corrections, but to block me from searching for that "misspelling" is both arrogant and patronizing.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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People misspelling their search terms are probably vastly more common than people looking for errors or alternate spellings. Maybe they figure if you're smart enough to spell perfectly you're smart enough to use 'powerplant -"power plant"'.
Posts: 148 | Registered: Feb 2000
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every time I see something about the Higgs Boson I want to promote Machinist Mate 3rd Class Higgs from Girl Genius to Boatswain so he'll be Bosun Higgs.
Sorry... long build up and not much payoff, I know. Such is my comedy, though, so deal with it.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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aspectre, your most recent post is the very first in my memory in which you didn't use some form of camel case. I was beginning to think you didn't have a spacebar, or thumbs. All in fun.
quote:Originally posted by Jim-Me: every time I see something about the Higgs Boson I want to promote Machinist Mate 3rd Class Higgs from Girl Genius to Boatswain so he'll be Bosun Higgs. .
:smack:
Don't you EVER do that again. Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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A groan would have been appropriate. Smacking him around for a bad pun? That seems excessive.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I searched in Yahoo and Google for the U.S.S. Higgs, and for H.M.S. Higgs, but all I could find was the U.S.S. Higgins.
I did find a mention of a Col. Nathan R. Jessep who served as bosun on the U.S.S. Higgs earlier in his career, before he switched to the marines--unfortunately that seems to have been a fictional character. But then, that might be fitting for the Higgs Boson.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Hm...why is this called the God Particle? It doesn't seem as important as that kind of nickname would suggest.
Posts: 1324 | Registered: Feb 2011
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The Higgs boson is often referred to as "the God particle" by the media,[41] after the title of Leon Lederman's book, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?[42] While use of this term may have contributed to increased media interest in particle physics and the Large Hadron Collider,[42] many scientists dislike it, since it overstates the particle's importance, not least since its discovery would still leave unanswered questions about the unification of QCD, the electroweak interaction and gravity, and the ultimate origin of the universe.[41] In a renaming competition, a jury of physicists chose the name "the champagne bottle boson" as the best popular name.[43]
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You have to love that the number of the quote just after "if the universe is the answer, what is the question" is "42". I'm pretty sure that's intentional. Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
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