Higgs Boson found, maybe.
My understanding, in a qualitative, shallow way, of physics ends with some Quantum Mechanics. When it comes to subatomic particles my knowledge is spotty at best. So I'll skip trying to explain why this would be a momentous discovery, and just state: it had better not be a repeat of the FTL neutrino debacle :)
Next stop, I think, Dark Matter.
Quote: s2dbakerCMS and Atlas (even the now decommissioned Tevatron) both see the signatures of a higgs. This is very different from the FTL neutrinos which only had one sensor.
Expected "Firsts" in science have a spotty record. Remember the "first" exoplanet found? It was a brown dwarf star. No doubt there's something there, well, little doubt. But whether it's the Higgs (or a Higgs) remains to be seen.
If it's something else, well, the unexpected discoveries are usually more interesting and have a bigger impact. The first actual exoplanets found shook up planetary formation theory something fierce ("Who ordered that?")
Quote:Former Cambridge University professor Hawking also joked that the discovery had actually cost him $100 in a bet. I had a bet with Gordon Kane of Michigan University that the Higgs particle wouldn't be found. It seems I have just lost $100."
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Quote: heatherI'm gonna be unhappy if they can demonstrate this. Then I'll have to come up with a completely new metaphor for "thing that everyone knows exists but nobody's ever seen".
The Higgs falls into the category of "things everyone suspects exist but no one has seen yet."
A good substitute would be a balanced budget.
No wonder half of Europe is broke with the $$ they have poured into this.
"Lederman [book author] said he gave it the nickname "the God particle" because [blah blah blah] 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."
So even though it's been detected (possibly), no one has actually seen it.
The same is true for quarks, BTW, which were detected some time ago. So that's 7 things (at least) we know to exist but which no one has seen. And that means you don't have to keep hunting for impossibilities like a balanced budget.
Edit: it's the Top Quark, not the Bottom.
Quote: s2dbakerThis is just speaking from the top of my head but I remember reading that the bottom quark is so massive that it actually can be observed without a partner quark although very fleetingly before it decays.
Edit: it's the Top Quark, not the Bottom.
This just sounds dirty.
You should here me go on about the worm hole!!Quote: rxwineThis just sounds dirty.
Quote:It's been 35 years, and when it comes to new particles and the like, there really hasn't been a single surprise. (The discovery of neutrino masses is a partial counterexample, as are various discoveries in cosmology.) Experiments have certainly discovered things--the W and Z bosons, the validity of QCD, the top quark. But all of them were as expected from the Standard Model; there were no surprises.
At some level I'm actually a little disappointed. I've made no secret--even to Peter Higgs--that I've never especially liked the Higgs mechanism. It's always seemed like a hack. And I've always hoped that in the end there'd be something more elegant and deep responsible for something as fundamental as the masses of particles. But it appears that nature is just picking what seems like a pedestrian solution to the problem: the Higgs mechanism in the Standard Model...
If the Standard Model is correct, yesterday's announcement is likely to be the last major discovery that could be made in a particle accelerator in our generation. Now, of course, there could be surprises, but it's not clear how much one should bet on them.
Stephen Wolfram
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Quote: slytherbig waste of money..no wonder half of Europe is broke.
How much would you say the World Wide Web is worth?
Granted that was not what CERN was set up for, but that's one of the things to come out of it. Granted, too, that governmetns should not be spending money on research, but all investments in research eventually pay off. If govenrments are going to spend money, it's best if they spend it on things like LHA.
According to all predictions, the Higgs boson should be Fermiophilic, that is it should show some kind of affinity to Fermions. It turns out the data suggest the particle found at the LHC is Fermophobic.
This is big news because wither 1) it's not a Higgs but rather some as yet unknown particle, or 2) it is a Higgs, but the predictionsa re wrong in some aspects.
In any case, this shows some specific flaw in the Standard Model.
This just keeps getting more interesting.
Quote: NareedThe Higgs falls into the category of "things everyone suspects exist but no one has seen yet."
A good substitute would be a balanced budget.
Like honest on-line Casinos?
