[Perpetual Motion]

The most coveted prize in particle physics - the Higgs boson - may have been glimpsed, say researchers reporting at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva.


They need more evidence to claim a discovery.


Sources:http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-16158374
http://richarddawkin...e-been-glimpsed

[Tres Juicy]

I had one in my pocket the whole time...

[Dekan]

Well, the LHC guys are under pressure, to come up with something. After all, they were provided with the LHC at great public expense. Naturally, the public want to know whether this expense, has led to some kind of result.

And the result the public want, is the detection of the Higgs Boson. Because this has been fed to the public, by newspapers and TV, as what the LHC is for.

Obviously, then, the guys can't tell the public: "No, we haven't found it." This might lead to the retort :"Then why are you wasting our money - shut it down!"

So announcements are made, such as tantalising glimpses of it may have been found. But further researches are needed, so wait till 2014.
This placates the taxpayers, and keeps the LHC going.

[Tres Juicy]

Dekan, on 14 December 2011 - 04:23 PM, said:

Well, the LHC guys are under pressure, to come up with something. After all, they were provided with the LHC at great public expense. Naturally, the public want to know whether this expense, has led to some kind of result.

And the result the public want, is the detection of the Higgs Boson. Because this has been fed to the public, by newspapers and TV, as what the LHC is for.

Obviously, then, the guys can't tell the public: "No, we haven't found it." This might lead to the retort :"Then why are you wasting our money - shut it down!"

So announcements are made, such as tantalising glimpses of it may have been found. But further researches are needed, so wait till 2014.
This placates the taxpayers, and keeps the LHC going.

Just look in your pockets, there's bound to be one in there somewhere

[Realitycheck]

No, this is Europe we're talking about. (Sorry, it was too hard to pass it up. I actually live very close to where the Superconductor Supercollider was supposed to be constructed. I wonder why they never finished it. My guess is that they didn't see fit to duplicate the efforts.)

[Tres Juicy]

Will nobody check their pockets?!

[Widdekind]

I understand, that the "proof", of Electro-Weak Unification, won Profs. Salam, Glashow, & Weinberg the Nobel Prize for Physics, in 1979 AD.

I understand, that their "proof" pre-supposed the existence, of the Higgs field, Higgs boson, & Higgs mechanism.

How could Profs. Salam, Glashow, & Weinberg, win a Nobel Prize, in 1979 AD, over 30 years before one of their assumptions, was even "possibly glimpsed" ?

[swansont]

Widdekind, on 10 January 2012 - 09:42 AM, said:

I understand, that the "proof", of Electro-Weak Unification, won Profs. Salam, Glashow, & Weinberg the Nobel Prize for Physics, in 1979 AD.

I understand, that their "proof" pre-supposed the existence, of the Higgs field, Higgs boson, & Higgs mechanism.

How could Profs. Salam, Glashow, & Weinberg, win a Nobel Prize, in 1979 AD, over 30 years before one of their assumptions, was even "possibly glimpsed" ?

The existence of the weak neutral current, one of the predictions, was confirmed in 1973; this is stated in the Nobel citation.

[Widdekind]

swansont, on 10 January 2012 - 11:45 AM, said:

The existence of the weak neutral current, one of the predictions, was confirmed in 1973; this is stated in the Nobel citation.

Logically, false assumptions can generate accurate predictions. Do I understand you to be acknowledging, that their EW Unification hypothesis assumes the existence, of the Higgs field; and, that, over 30 years later, the Higgs field has yet been experimentally verified ?

[swansont]

Widdekind, on 10 January 2012 - 03:08 PM, said:

Logically, false assumptions can generate accurate predictions. Do I understand you to be acknowledging, that their EW Unification hypothesis assumes the existence, of the Higgs field; and, that, over 30 years later, the Higgs field has yet been experimentally verified ?

I am not a nuclear/particle physicist. I don't know what the specific dependence on the Higgs is, so I can't acknowledge anything of the sort. All I did was find the Nobel citation and look up the weak neutral current discovery. (simple research, BTW).

[MigL]

Its my understanding that the Higgs mechanism is one possible scenario for the symmetry breaking of the electroweak. There are others. I think AJB has alluded to other theories.

[ajb]

MigL, on 11 January 2012 - 02:49 AM, said:

Its my understanding that the Higgs mechanism is one possible scenario for the symmetry breaking of the electroweak. There are others. I think AJB has alluded to other theories.

Technicolor is another possible theory. I am not sure what exactly the status of technicolor is at the moment.

[Widdekind]

I understand, that:

Quote

The combination of the SU(2) gauge theory of the weak interaction, the electromagnetic interaction, and the Higgs mechanism is known as the Glashow-Weinberg-Salam model. These days it is widely accepted as one of the pillars of the Standard Model of particle physics

From the wikipedia articles, I understand, that the Higgs mechanism is intrinsic to the EW unification model:

Quote

In the Standard Model, the W^± and Z⁰ bosons, and the photon, are produced by the spontaneous symmetry breaking of the electroweak symmetry from SU(2) × U(1)_Y to U(1)_em, caused by the Higgs mechanism...

The distinction between electromagnetism and the weak force arises because there is a (nontrivial) linear combination of Y and I₃ that vanishes for the Higgs boson (it is an eigenstate of both Y and I₃, so the coefficients may be taken as −I₃ and Y): U(1)_em is defined to be the group generated by this linear combination, and is unbroken because it does not interact with the Higgs.

Apparently, according to the Standard Model, the photon of EM "does not interact with the Higgs", i.e. photons have no mass. Does that mean, that according to the SM, photons do not gravitate ?

[ajb]

Widdekind, on 11 January 2012 - 10:23 AM, said:

I understand, that:

From the wikipedia articles, I understand, that the Higgs mechanism is intrinsic to the EW unification model:

In essence the Higgs-Kibble mechanism is a way of giving mass to gauge bosons, thus breaking gauge symmetry but keeping the renormaliability of the theory. That is the key point: gauge bosons can be massive yet the quantum theory is still well defined (as well as any perturbative QFT in 4d Minkowski space-time).

This mechanism is indeed a central part of the standard model and in particular electroweak unification. This is why find out if the Higgs boson exist or not.

Widdekind, on 11 January 2012 - 10:23 AM, said:

Apparently, according to the Standard Model, the photon of EM "does not interact with the Higgs", i.e. photons have no mass. Does that mean, that according to the SM, photons do not gravitate ?

Free photon have no mass. However, the standard model does not include gravitation so there is nothing to say.

According to general relativity photons do interact with gravity, light rays are bent around massive objects for example. A little more than this, photons carry energy-momentum and so can themselves act as a source of gravity. But again, the standard model does not include gravity.

This post has been edited by ajb: 11 January 2012 - 10:41 AM

[Widdekind]

According to Nambu's book Quarks, the Higgs mechanism treats the fabric of space-time like a "super-conducting material", exhibiting "skin effects", analogizing the short range of propagation of EM fields in SCs, to the short-range propagation, of massive boson fields, in space-time.

Does that mean that the "vacuum energy" is a little like an "ocean of water", within which background "water molecules" can "break apart", into "OH^-, H⁺", i.e. matter & antimatter ?? Or, would the ionization of iron, into soluble Fe⁺⁺ ions, be like the "ionization" of electrons, into neutrinos, which are "much more soluble in spacetime", i.e. have much reduced mass, and propagate much more readily ??

[prephysics]

In that article it states, "Gianotti called the findings "beautiful results" at the seminar, but stopped well short of declaring victory because there's not enough data for statistical certainty. "It's too early to draw definite conclusions...We believe we have built a solid foundation on the exciting months to come."

How can "statistical certainty" be anything other than almost certain? Are we not talking about a "definite maybe" here?