Higgs at 120Gev ! - Page 3

sjastro · #41 13-12-2011, 01:00 PM

CERN status on Higgs boson tonight.

Webcast can be seen here.
http://webcast.web.cern.ch/webcast/

The status update will commence at 14.00 CET (Central European time) or 23.00 AEDT. (11.00 pm)

Regards

Steven

sjastro · #42 14-12-2011, 10:15 AM

As any astroimager knows more data is the key to increasing the signal/noise ratio, the Atlas and CMS experiments are in the same boat.

The fact that 2 separate experiments are revealing the same effect is significant, unless each experiment afflicted with the same systematic errors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KOoumH4dYA
(There is a stupid ad at the start)

Regards

Steven

CraigS · #43 14-12-2011, 10:26 AM

Good on 'em for being honest about it !!!

The pressure to tell everyone what they want to hear must be immense, but the way they've handled the announcement shows respect for the teams involved … and those eagerly awaiting.

Great stuff !

Cheers

Suzy · #44 15-12-2011, 12:15 AM

Brian Greene & Lawrence Krauss answering some questions regarding Higgs.
See it here at the World Science Festival.

And here by Lawrence Krauss, "Hunting the Higgs: what is it and why does it matter?"
Nicely explained for learner physicists wannabes like me.

Suzy · #45 15-12-2011, 12:26 AM

Does anyone know why this is referred to as the "champagne particle" by scientists (more popularly known as the God particle that the media have coined)?

Robh (Rob) · #46 15-12-2011, 01:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Suzy

Does anyone know why this is referred to as the "champagne particle" by scientists (more popularly known as the God particle that the media have coined)?

Hi Suzy,

I'm not sure that it is referred to this way by scientists. Apparently the British Guardian held a competition for an alternative name and chose "the champagne bottle boson" as the winner. The Higgs potential is in the shape of the bottom central part of a wine bottle (also Mexican Hat shaped).

The experimental physicist Leon Lederman initially wanted to call the Higgs Boson "the goddamn particle" because no-one could find it. However his editor wouldn't pass this one and his book was titled "The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?". The media were quick to adopt the God particle.

Regards, Rob

strongmanmike (Michael) · #47 15-12-2011, 03:24 PM

I was thinking about the Higgs Boson last night and when I stopped, it was a massive weight off my mind

Suzy · #48 15-12-2011, 05:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

I was thinking about the Higgs Boson last night and when I stopped, it was a massive weight off my mind

Rob,
Thanks so much for all that info. We were talking about it on facebook so now I can go and tell them. We were all guessing how they derived "champagne" out of it.

It now makes sense.

skies2clear · #49 16-12-2011, 09:30 AM

Perhaps they should have called it the Chocolate boson. Proximity gains you a lot of mass.

Sorry for the corny joke!

Clear skies

xelasnave · #50 16-12-2011, 11:07 AM

Can anyone suggest a good movie of how it works?

I am confused really...I get the impression the Universe is awash with HB,s and yet they are also bound to matter.

I took a long time reading Stevens link to Princetons work but it did not give that mental picture I crave...no odubt there is a good utube that reduces years of study on the matter to 2 or 3 minutes

alex

sjastro · #51 16-12-2011, 11:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by xelasnave

Can anyone suggest a good movie of how it works?

I am confused really...I get the impression the Universe is awash with HB,s and yet they are also bound to matter.

I took a long time reading Stevens link to Princetons work but it did not give that mental picture I crave...no odubt there is a good utube that reduces years of study on the matter to 2 or 3 minutes

alex

Alex,

The key is to understand what a boson is. In simple terms a boson is the product of an interaction.

Here is a Brian Cox video describing various bosons, such as the photon, gluon, W and Z bosons and the Higgs boson.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/vi...=ILCNETTXT3487

Hope it helps.

Steven

Robh (Rob) · #52 16-12-2011, 12:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by xelasnave

Can anyone suggest a good movie of how it works?

I am confused really...I get the impression the Universe is awash with HB,s and yet they are also bound to matter.

I took a long time reading Stevens link to Princetons work but it did not give that mental picture I crave...no odubt there is a good utube that reduces years of study on the matter to 2 or 3 minutes

alex

Alex,

Here is a short video. Don't know whether it explains enough for you but worth a look.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIg1Vh7uPyw

Regards, Rob

xelasnave · #53 16-12-2011, 12:43 PM

Thank you Steven thank you Rob

.

alex

Robh (Rob) · #54 18-12-2011, 11:19 AM

Hi All,

Rather than start another thread on the Higgs boson, I thought it might be appropriate here.
This is a great little read. It is an interesting appraisal of the relevance of the Higgs boson to physics and whether we are any closer to the "theory of everything".

Some excerpts ...
<Lederman himself confessed that “the Goddamn Particle” might have been a better name for the Higgs, given how hard it had been to detect “and the expense it is causing.” >

<But the Higgs doesn’t take us any closer to a unified theory than climbing a tree would take me to the Moon.>

<... The quest for a unified theory will come to be seen not as a branch of science, which tells us about the real world, but as a kind of mathematical theology.>

Some of the philosophical points here are also relevant to discussions going on in other threads.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...nd-of-physics/

Regards, Rob

renormalised (Carl) · #55 18-12-2011, 02:03 PM

The moniker, "The God Particle", was probably the most unfortunate one ever pinned on a particle, of any sort. The moment it became public....well, you know what happened.

A ToE has to encompass all that is known about physics and how everything is interconnected, then wrap it up into a simple, elegant explanation that anyone could see the beauty and elegance of. They're far, far away from achieving that and the Higgs isn't the answer. It is just another (possible) particle and maybe one more rung in the ladder. Even if they discover all the particles there are and all the physical interactions that are possible and how everything is interconnected through all the possible pathways etc etc, they may still not find a ToE. It mightn't even exist or it could be right under our noses and we just don't even realise it.

Someone (thanks Rob) wrote this...

Quote:

The quest for a unified theory will come to be seen not as a branch of science, which tells us about the real world, but as a kind of mathematical theology.

Who's to say what is real and what is reality. Despite it's pronouncements to the contrary, science deals as much in "theology" as mathematics does. Whilst it tends to confine itself to only what it can observe and therefore verify, science knows no more about what is present "reality" than what a soothsayer can know of the future. It deals with the past, exclusively, especially in fields such as astronomy, cosmology and such. All it can do is extrapolate on what it finds of the past and then project that extrapolation into the present and future. What's even more interesting is that all of this is time dependent and yet we have no clue as to what "time" actually is. For all we know it maybe an illusion of our own consciousness and how that consciousness interacts with its environment (or creates it in the first place)...the physicality it resides in. Illusions can be just as concrete and solid as anything deemed physical, if one is willing to "believe" in them honestly enough.