Higgs Particle Discovered at CERN!

[LAW]

Both of the Higgs hunting experiments at CERN have independently discovered the Higgs Particle! This is massive news! (Pun intended). Both ATLAS and CMS detectors have logged Five Sigma results in the 125.6 GeV energy levels. That's 99.99997% accuracy!

I can't possibly explain how cool this is if you don't understand, so here's some youtube clips that should make you all as excited as I am. :D

This Playlist is from my favourite Youtube channel "Sixty Symbols" and it's everything you need to know about the LHC and CERN
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7DEC46BD7058D7BB&feature=plcp


This video explains what "Five Sigma" means.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThP51oPttS0

This is a documentary from BBC Horizon on the "Hunt for Higgs".
http://youtu.be/QDXfyWIPtvY

:party2:

[DavidU]

Big news for sure:thumbsup:

[Suzy]

Hi Murphy :hi:
Hugely exciting times isn't it! I have been watching the live Cern webcast and keeping up with the news since 6pm and phew haven't stopped and have been celebrating with glasses of wine *hick* must stop now :lol:.
The news is only just starting to trickle through in the last hour or so.
It's been such a rush to witness this historical news and watching the media releases come through! :D
I have to say, I couldn't understand a lot of what they were talking about in the webcast announcement with all their graphs etc, but hey, my eyes were glued to the screen and I was so excited, even if I didn't full understand how they got to where they got to, to find it, I knew it was important stuff and I was going to soak in every single bit of it!!! :D

The theory of everything... here we come! :thumbsup:

This is from Brian Greene on my facebook wall...

[LAW]

Yeah I've been glued to the webcast too! Interestingly the Theory of Super Symmetry (SUSY :)) actually requires 5 Higgs particles, not to mention all the anti-leptons and anti-fermions which either haven't been discovered or don't exist so CERN and the LHC still have a LOT of work to do.

I loved the stunned silence when the CMS director announced a "Five Sigma" result, proper goosebumps moment that was.

[spacezebra]

The series Sixty Symbols is great - I had no idea they were about - many thanks for posting.

Im first year uni physics - so I have a long way to go...

Cheers Petra d.

[Robh]

Great piece of scientific work!

Here's a press release from CERN ...
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2012/PR17.12E.html

Regards, Rob

[LAW]

If you like Sixty Symbols also check out Brady's other channels "Periodic Table of Videos" "Deep Sky Videos" and "Nottingham Science". Far too easy to burn a few hours being sapiosexual. (There's a familiar face from IIS on Deep Sky Videos ;))

[Dave2042]

This is wonderful.

Nevertheless a small part of me is almost disappointed. As plenty have observed before me, not finding the Higgs might have been much more interesting, in that it would have required a major rethink of a whole lot of 'known' science.

That said, as mentioned below, it still leaves a lot of work and potential surprises.

[sjastro]

So the ad hoc assumptions of the Higgs mechanism were obviously spot on.:lol:

The knock on effects of the discovery are being seen.
The electroweak theory which predicted the W and Z bosons and were discovered in the 1980s, was based on the existence of the Higgs boson, is now fully vindicated.

While the Standard Model was never able to nail down a firm prediction for the Higgs mass, String theory predicted the Higgs mass in the 122-129 GeV interval.

A major triumph for String theory?

Regards

Steven

[multiweb]

Yeah that 60 symbols series great. Really interesting. Easy to understand too :thumbsup:

[multiweb]

So what are the exact implications of the discovery. They say it's going to be a leap forwards in our understanding of the structure of matter. Is this going to have any practical effects in near future technology used in everydays life?

[Robh]

Hi Steven,

Didn't know that.

Interesting to see whether the properties of the Higgs leans further towards string theory.

Regards, Rob

[AstralTraveller]

I doubt it in the near term but who knows in the long term? People once wondered what we could ever do with electricity.

[sjastro]

I doubt very much we will see any technological benefits in the foreseeable future, for example the W and Z bosons were discovered in the 1980s and no one has been able to put the associated theory or the bosons to good use.;)

I suspect however Cosmologists are very interested in the discovery. The creation of bosons with mass is an example of what is known as symmetry breaking.
Cosmologists see symmetry breaking as a possible mechanism to explain inflation in the early history of the Universe, some even see it as causing the Big Bang, so perhaps the Higgs boson will play a central role in Cosmological theories.

Time will tell.

Regards

Steven

[arifmshaikh]

Where does name Boson comes from, have look at this article.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/God-Why-did-world-forget-Bosons-father/articleshow/14683835.cms

[sjastro]

Hi Rob,

String theory has been criticized as unfalsifiable, a prediction made by String Theory which can be tested certainly counters the criticism.

Regards

Steven

[Dave2042]

I'm reminded of Robert Wilson's justification of the (at the time) enormous cost of setting up Fermilab at the height of the Cold War. He was expected claim that it would help defend America against Communism. Instead, he said that it would help make America worth defending - a sentiment sadly in shorter and shorter supply.

[avandonk]

The implications are as obscure as the popularity of the hit Stairway to Heaven!


Bert

[sjastro]

Bose's contributions to Quantum mechanics are well known and respected in the West.

As a result of the Higgs Boson discovery there are calls for Bose to be recognized with a Bharat Ratna (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Ratna).

Regards

Steven

[madbadgalaxyman]

In respect of the "usefulness" of the Higgs field, I think that, based on previous experience, it is not yet possible to know whether or not it is going to lead to some kind of technology.

Faraday, the great pioneer of practical electricity, was once asked what was the use of all of his mucking around on a tabletop with magnets and wires and compasses. He is reported to have answered : "what is the use of a child?"

[AndrewJ]

Understanding String theory just ties me in knots,
and now understanding Higgs Bosons is weighing me down.
Does this mean i understand?

Andrew

[Ric]

Trying to understand all of the info coming through is quite a daunting task.

I'm definitely a layman in this type of stuff but I know it's one of the great discoveries of the 21st century.

So where does this discovery lead on to now? Is there another area that now can be explored.

[Jay-qu]

As we stand now, the Higgs observation has confirmed the Standard Model. Knowing that the Higgs is real means we are on the right track and that we don't have to throw out work that has built on the mechanism over the last 40 years.

The problem is that we know the Standard Model is 'wrong'.. actually, a better word is incomplete, for example it doesn't include gravity, dark matter or dark energy. To help guide theorists to move 'beyond the Standard Model' and build a more complete model of the universe we need the LHC to find something new.

Other than these glaring omissions from the Standard Model, it is hard to find experiments that directly disagree with predictions made by the model. The paradigm for finding 'new' physics over the last century has been to smash things together harder and harder. I think most physicists have given up seeing direct evidence of supersymmetry at this energy, and so will have to wait for the LHC upgrade (doubling the energy).

What we can hope is that the Higgs being observed is actually not quite what the Standard Model predicts. It could be that the Higgs decays differently than expected, for example it may produce more photons.

This would be a very important hint of physics beyond the Standard Model. So from here, the work is only beginning (again)!