Higgs Boson News to be announced Dec 13th

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by Pincho Paxton, Dec 12, 2011.

  1. DwayneD.L.Rabon Registered Senior Member

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    Well, Dywyddyr
    The only place you make decisions you think are right is in your head, so what makes other people don't do the same.
    Different opinons make for conversation, certainly there are different opinions about the Higgs particle.
    Of the millions put into the project the particle still remains of question.

    If your so smart about the particle the offer some help to the point of the particle, and contend with the ignorance you think is there so a advancement can be made.
    DwayneD.L.Rabon
     
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  3. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Apart from when they turn out to be right in fact.

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  5. RJBeery Natural Philosopher Valued Senior Member

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    Does anyone know enough about the details of the search for Higgs to comment on the following?
     
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  7. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    They built the LHC just to find the Higgs Boson. The scientists "thought" that they would find it at the energy levels that the LHC can produce. Once they finally tried to detect the Higgs at the level they thought it was at they did not find it there. Then they tried to use other energy level and alas nothing turned up there either. Now they will try yet another energy level to find the Higgs particle but they won't find it there either. So they will continue until all energies are tried they can get the LHC to produce but, to me, there's not enough power to even come close to finding it, if it even exists at all. I don't think it does and have an ongoing bet with one of our scientists that reside here.
     
  8. RJBeery Natural Philosopher Valued Senior Member

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    Ah! Well I commend both you AND the scientist with whom you have a bet to have the conviction enough to put some money down. In my experience, it's easy to say anything you want on the internet...until it potentially costs you money!
     
  9. Pincho Paxton Banned Banned

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    Did you not know part of my theory was on TV last week? By Stephen Hawking

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  10. OnlyMe Valued Senior Member

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    That will depend upon who you are asking. There are some who have devoted years to the standard model. Their lives and life's work is tied up with the SM. For some there would be no disproof that would be convincing. They have too much invested in where they are.

    There can be no question that the standard model has been extremely successful as a predictive model for particle physics. The Higgs is a sense the key to moving the standard model from a predictive model to a descriptive model.

    In essence, though the SM can predict what happens in accelerators and to a more limited extent atomic physics, it cannot yet be said to represent the description of the fundamental structure of matter, descriptively.

    An example is that the Greeks had a mechanical computer that could accurately predict the location, into the future, of the known planets, solar and lunar eclipses etc.. I do not remember off hand what it was called. It was a successful predictive tool based on a successful predictive model, that assumed the earth was at the center of the universe. It turns out to have been predictive with no descriptive component.

    If the Higgs is not found, even proven not to exist, it will not change the success of the SM or its continued usefulness. It will suggest to the upcoming generations that there are things still to be discovered. Frontiers of physics to be explored and conquered. It does not even mean that there may be some other means through which the SM may yet prove to be descriptive. It just would not include the Higgs.
     
    Last edited: Dec 15, 2011
  11. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Well no actual money was bet, I just bet that I'd have another heart attack before they found the Higgs particle is all. :shrug:
     
  12. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    In addition to what cosmic already said, one thing to keep in mind is that there are multiple different theories of the Higgs Boson which give different predictions about what energy level you need to observe it. It isn't the case that there's a single theory with this energy level as a free parameters, which can always be easily adjusted to accomodate (lack of) observations. So what happens as those energy levels are tried, is that you start eliminating various of the theories. I'm unsure of the exact details, but my understanding is that LHC could never definitively prove that the Higgs Boson does not exist, but if it puts a sufficiently high floor under the energy associated with such, the theories that we'll be left with will be sufficiently bizarre and ugly that the theoreticians will give up on them and move in another direction.
     
  13. RJBeery Natural Philosopher Valued Senior Member

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    I was hoping there were some bounds along the lines of "if the Higgs is not located under energy level XXX then the math falls apart due to...", but you're describing what I suspected...that it's going to be a subjective decision on when to give up the search and there will always be clingers-on until something better comes along.
     
  14. Robittybob1 Banned Banned

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    Just an aside:
    Looking at that one sentence "It turns out to have been predice with no descriptive component." There seemed to be a new word there "Predice".
    I think the word might have meant to be predictive, but was written as predice, which on checking the internet is the Interlingua word for the Verb "predicer" meaning to predict
    So the word "predice" means "predicts" or possibly "predictive" weird that the error is also correct.

    And gives a sense of prediction, random = throw a dice. Predictable - know before hand what the dice will show = pre + dice.
     
  15. OnlyMe Valued Senior Member

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    The wonders of spell checkers and mobile devices. Thanks for the heads up. It should have been predictive, and has been corrected.

    P.S. You know I fixed that then posted that I did...., and then read the rest of your post. A good chuckle there!

    So what you are saying is, I could have taken credit for the use of some obscure spelling. And I am still getting a chuckle out of a mistake, having the same essential meaning.
     
  16. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Twas ever thus. Heck, there are still hold-outs coming here to SciForums to dispute rock-solid stuff like special relativity, which had been vetted to death long before they were ever born. But even in the non-crank category, you've got theoretical physicists who have a career stake in whichever variants of the theories relevant to the Higgs Boson, so you can expect them to advocate their stances vigorously until they find a new anchor for their career, or such advocacy starts to actively harm their careers itself.
     
  17. Robittybob1 Banned Banned

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    Not only a mistake but a really good new word at that.

    Predice meaning to know the future. something like that.
     
  18. AlphaNumeric Fully ionized Registered Senior Member

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    They have already excluded it from multiple energy regions, because we do not see an excess of processes which carry the Higgs signature. If you don't see the signature clearly at any energy scale less than about 300GeV then you've excluded the SM's version of it. There are more exotic versions but you have to make them more and more contrived. I can't remember the remaining intervals but they all lie in the 100-200GeV region and if that's excluded the Higgs is killed.

    There's a reason the Higgs cannot be just pushed into higher energy regions, it's to do with the unitary of W-W scattering processes. They violate some condition if the Higgs doesn't exist below a few hundred GeV, unless there is some other effect which comes into play. If the Higgs isn't found by the LHC then it doesn't exist. Other particles might and they might do nifty stuff but the Higgs as it stands either will be found by the LHC or it doesn't exist.

    You're deluded and dishonest.

    No one in the theoretical physics community gets fired if their papers are found to later contradict experiments. If that were the case 99.99-100% of the community would be fired every time they turn on a new collider. Part of research is exploring what turn out to be blind alleys, no one who does science should think it's a case of "Be right or you're fired!". Half the time it's luck or random decisions about which model to develop and explore. For example, if my PhD supervisor hadn't joined the department just before I did I'd never have done the PhD I did. No one else in the department did the topic area, it was luck someone new did what I already had an interest in.

    Part of science is scatter gunning as many possibilities as the community can manage so we have covered as many bases as possible. That way when the LHC was turned on we already had 101+ different scenarios covered. If X happens then it means models A, B and C are possible but D and E are out. If Y happens then B, D and F are possible but A, C and E are out. Then you keep narrowing. If you run out of models then you start producing more based on the results so far. Big ideas like entirely new types of models get you more recognition because you provide another way of viewing everything.

    Lay people need to get rid of this notion that scientists are worried about losing their jobs if their work is shown to be mistaken. If anything an entire community being shown to have been fundamentally mistaken results in huge innovation and career opportunities. Right now we're mostly checking ideas whose origins are in the 60s and 70s. What if they turn out to all be wrong? Then we sweep the table clear and ideas from this generation are given more time and development.
     
  19. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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  20. hansda Valued Senior Member

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    This MASS is from where ? ... from ENERGY ? ... or ... from NOTHING ? ... or ... is it GOD's gift ?
     
  21. RJBeery Natural Philosopher Valued Senior Member

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    This is true science.
     
  22. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    Do you mean Sunday Mass, or Midnight Mass?
     
  23. Robittybob1 Banned Banned

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    and/or Christmas!

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