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CERN to make an announcement regarding the Higgs on July 4.

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Jono
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04 Jul 2012, 4:41 am

ruveyn wrote:
This will not be the last word on the matter. The entire experiment will be reviewed by the physics community to see if there are any flaws in the experiment and measurement itself.

Do you recall the recent OPERA flap, the finding that presumably showed neutrinos go faster than light speed? It turned out there was a defect in the equipment and the claim has been rescinded.

Do do not jump to any conclusions until the finding is vetted by the physics community.

ruveyn


Trust me, if not the Higgs, it is something like the Higgs. Both the CMS and ATLAS collaborations found a particle similar to the Higgs above 5 sigma (standard deviations higher than the normal standard deviation in the background). This means that there is only a 1 in 3 million chance that what they found is due to random statistical fluctuations, enough to be considered a discovery and it's not going away. They are doing the press conference now and I didn't think they would actually announce it as a discovery. I'm almost 100% certain that Peter Higgs is guaranteed to get a Nobel Prize, if not this year then next year.



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04 Jul 2012, 5:37 am

Jono wrote:
Trust me, if not the Higgs, it is something like the Higgs. Both the CMS and ATLAS collaborations found a particle similar to the Higgs above 5 sigma (standard deviations higher than the normal standard deviation in the background). This means that there is only a 1 in 3 million chance that what they found is due to random statistical fluctuations, enough to be considered a discovery and it's not going away. They are doing the press conference now and I didn't think they would actually announce it as a discovery. I'm almost 100% certain that Peter Higgs is guaranteed to get a Nobel Prize, if not this year then next year.


Huh... Nobel Prize? I've heard they only give those when the discovery has an actual aplication that time has proven to be very important forwe humans. It reckon it will take a long time to reach that point with the Higgs boson.


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Jono
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04 Jul 2012, 6:02 am

Shatbat wrote:
Jono wrote:
Trust me, if not the Higgs, it is something like the Higgs. Both the CMS and ATLAS collaborations found a particle similar to the Higgs above 5 sigma (standard deviations higher than the normal standard deviation in the background). This means that there is only a 1 in 3 million chance that what they found is due to random statistical fluctuations, enough to be considered a discovery and it's not going away. They are doing the press conference now and I didn't think they would actually announce it as a discovery. I'm almost 100% certain that Peter Higgs is guaranteed to get a Nobel Prize, if not this year then next year.


Huh... Nobel Prize? I've heard they only give those when the discovery has an actual aplication that time has proven to be very important forwe humans. It reckon it will take a long time to reach that point with the Higgs boson.


Actually, no. I don't know what the precise rules are but for a discovery to be considered for the Nobel Prize, it mainly has to be considered important enough and an actual discovery of the Higgs boson is most definitely significant enough in physics to warrant that. In fact, I know of a number of Nobel Prizes prizes in physics that were awarded for discoveries that have no direct practical or technological application. However, if they did have a practical application then I'm sure it would be taken into account because it would have more impact on humanity as a whole.



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04 Jul 2012, 6:32 am

Shatbat wrote:
Jono wrote:
Trust me, if not the Higgs, it is something like the Higgs. Both the CMS and ATLAS collaborations found a particle similar to the Higgs above 5 sigma (standard deviations higher than the normal standard deviation in the background). This means that there is only a 1 in 3 million chance that what they found is due to random statistical fluctuations, enough to be considered a discovery and it's not going away. They are doing the press conference now and I didn't think they would actually announce it as a discovery. I'm almost 100% certain that Peter Higgs is guaranteed to get a Nobel Prize, if not this year then next year.


Huh... Nobel Prize? I've heard they only give those when the discovery has an actual aplication that time has proven to be very important forwe humans. It reckon it will take a long time to reach that point with the Higgs boson.


thing is that if they truly have found teh higgs boson then they finally explained the actual underlying causes of the assymetry between the fundamental forces mathematically(i can barely think of an analogue discovery in any field), as well as having a much firmer framwork for understanding the underlying causes of gravity.

that in turn would allow us to falsify some of the untill now untestable ToE's, probing the particle itself and finding out how it behaves could then point us in the next direction of discovery towards that "goal".


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ruveyn
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04 Jul 2012, 10:12 am

Jono wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
This will not be the last word on the matter. The entire experiment will be reviewed by the physics community to see if there are any flaws in the experiment and measurement itself.

Do you recall the recent OPERA flap, the finding that presumably showed neutrinos go faster than light speed? It turned out there was a defect in the equipment and the claim has been rescinded.

Do do not jump to any conclusions until the finding is vetted by the physics community.

ruveyn


Trust me, if not the Higgs, it is something like the Higgs. Both the CMS and ATLAS collaborations found a particle similar to the Higgs above 5 sigma (standard deviations higher than the normal standard deviation in the background). This means that there is only a 1 in 3 million chance that what they found is due to random statistical fluctuations, enough to be considered a discovery and it's not going away. They are doing the press conference now and I didn't think they would actually announce it as a discovery. I'm almost 100% certain that Peter Higgs is guaranteed to get a Nobel Prize, if not this year then next year.


Standard Deviations?? Just how does the Central Limit Theorem enter into particle and field physics.

Has there been a sampling of a population? Why assume Gaussian statistics?

In any case this is NOT proof of the Null Hypothesis (i.e. the Higgs Boson exists). It best is is a statistical reason for not rejecting the null hypothesis.

And hold on to your cap. The experiment has yet to be carefully vetted by those who neither designed it, nor participated in it.

ruveyn



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04 Jul 2012, 10:58 am

If these results are successfully vetted and withstand the essential scrutiny of the scientific community, then this is a truly momentous day in the history of Science. I will sceptically wait until the conclusion of the matter, but allow me to let out a cautiously muffled 'YAAAAAAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! !! !! !! !! :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D'. Congrats, in advance, to the obvious winner of a future Nobel Prize. Is the explanation for mass finally here?



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04 Jul 2012, 11:40 am

My understanding is that they HAVE found a new particle, but they are not quite sure if it is the Higgs boson as defined by current theory; in some ways it might be more interesting if it is a new particle but not quite what was expected.

I remember reading an article some time back - I think in New Scientist or may Science - that said if the LHC didn't find proof / strong support for current theory, but did find something else interesting - this might be even more interesting than proving existing theory.

Either way I think some really interesting things are coming out of CERN, and I find it really exciting.

The LHC is a truly awesome piece of engineering too...

(I just don't understand very much this stuff - my physics education stopped at 15 though I have tried to understand more by getting those who have studied it at a higher level to explain things to me and reading some popular science books. Please don't ask me to explain any of this stuff...I do wish I understood particle physics better than I do though).



Shorttail
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04 Jul 2012, 3:53 pm

They cleverly stated it was "a" Higgs boson, not necessarily the one they were looking for according to the standard model.



Last edited by Shorttail on 05 Jul 2012, 9:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

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04 Jul 2012, 6:22 pm

This is great news!! ! :D

Now I'm curious what they will found at even higher energy!


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05 Jul 2012, 10:37 am

Tollorin wrote:
This is great news!! ! :D

Now I'm curious what they will found at even higher energy!


me 2!! !!



AspieRogue

06 Jul 2012, 6:53 pm

I can't say that I'm thrilled about finding the Higgs Boson. what will be truly exciting is (if and)when they announce the detection of magnetic monopoles produced by an accelerator based particle collision! 8)


Only 2 have ever been found. One in 1975 and the most famous on valentines day, 1982. Both of those monopoles were caught by cosmic ray detectors and not produced in accelerators.



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06 Jul 2012, 7:03 pm

AspieRogue wrote:
when they announce the detection of magnetic monopoles produced by an accelerator based particle collision! 8)

Never heard of that. But I foresee infinite puns if it does happen. 8D



ruveyn
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06 Jul 2012, 7:55 pm

AspieRogue wrote:
I can't say that I'm thrilled about finding the Higgs Boson. what will be truly exciting is (if and)when they announce the detection of magnetic monopoles produced by an accelerator based particle collision! 8)


Only 2 have ever been found. One in 1975 and the most famous on valentines day, 1982. Both of those monopoles were caught by cosmic ray detectors and not produced in accelerators.


Those observations are questionable and problematic. It is not generally accepted that magnetic monopoles have been detected.


What you probably have in mind is this:

"Monopoles" in condensed-matter systems

While the (currently understood) laws of physics (specifically the law ∇⋅B=0) forbid the existence of monopoles in B, no such restriction applies to the magnetic H field. As a result, while all known particles (including the protons, neutrons, and electrons that make up the periodic table) have zero magnetic charge, the phenomenon of fractionalization can lead to quasiparticles that are monopoles of H. There are indeed a number of examples in condensed-matter physics where collective behavior leads to emergent phenomena that resemble magnetic monopoles in certain respects,[23][24][25] including most prominently the spin ice materials.[26][27] While these should not be confused with hypothetical elementary monopoles existing in the vacuum, they nonetheless have similar properties and can be probed using similar techniques.
ruveyn



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07 Jul 2012, 5:23 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_monopole#Grand_unified_theories_2

Wikipedia wrote:
In more recent years, a new class of theories has also suggested the existence of magnetic monopoles.

During the early 1970s, the successes of quantum field theory and gauge theory in the development of electroweak theory and the mathematics of the strong nuclear force led many theorists to move on to attempt to combine them in a single theory known as a Grand Unified Theory (GUT). Several GUTs were proposed, most of which had the curious[says who?] feature of implying the presence of a real magnetic monopole particle. More accurately, GUTs predicted a range of particles known as dyons, of which the most basic state was a monopole. The charge on magnetic monopoles predicted by GUTs is either 1 or 2 gD, depending on the theory.

The majority of particles appearing in any quantum field theory are unstable, and they decay into other particles in a variety of reactions that must satisfy various conservation laws. Stable particles are stable because there are no lighter particles into which they can decay and still satisfy the conservation laws. For instance, the electron has a lepton number of one and an electric charge of one, and there are no lighter particles that conserve these values. On the other hand, the muon, essentially a heavy electron, can decay into the electron plus two quanta of energy, and hence it is not stable.

The dyons in these GUTs are also stable, but for an entirely different reason. The dyons are expected to exist as a side effect of the "freezing out" of the conditions of the early universe, or a symmetry breaking. In this scenario, the dyons arise due to the configuration of the vacuum in a particular area of the universe, according to the original Dirac theory. They remain stable not because of a conservation condition, but because there is no simpler topological state into which they can decay.

The length scale over which this special vacuum configuration exists is called the correlation length of the system. A correlation length cannot be larger than causality would allow, therefore the correlation length for making magnetic monopoles must be at least as big as the horizon size determined by the metric of the expanding universe. According to that logic, there should be at least one magnetic monopole per horizon volume as it was when the symmetry breaking took place. Other arguments based on the critical density of the universe indicate that monopoles should be fairly common; the apparent problem of the observed scarcity of monopoles is resolved by cosmic inflation in the early universe, which greatly reduces the expected abundance of magnetic monopoles. For these reasons, monopoles became a major interest in the 1970s and 80s, along with the other "approachable" predictions of GUTs such as proton decay.

Many of the other particles predicted by these GUTs were beyond the abilities of current experiments to detect. For instance, a wide class of particles known as the X and Y bosons are predicted to mediate the coupling of the electroweak and strong forces, but these particles are extremely heavy and well beyond the capabilities of any reasonable particle accelerator to create.


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Jono
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08 Jul 2012, 8:40 am

ruveyn wrote:
Jono wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
This will not be the last word on the matter. The entire experiment will be reviewed by the physics community to see if there are any flaws in the experiment and measurement itself.

Do you recall the recent OPERA flap, the finding that presumably showed neutrinos go faster than light speed? It turned out there was a defect in the equipment and the claim has been rescinded.

Do do not jump to any conclusions until the finding is vetted by the physics community.

ruveyn


Trust me, if not the Higgs, it is something like the Higgs. Both the CMS and ATLAS collaborations found a particle similar to the Higgs above 5 sigma (standard deviations higher than the normal standard deviation in the background). This means that there is only a 1 in 3 million chance that what they found is due to random statistical fluctuations, enough to be considered a discovery and it's not going away. They are doing the press conference now and I didn't think they would actually announce it as a discovery. I'm almost 100% certain that Peter Higgs is guaranteed to get a Nobel Prize, if not this year then next year.


Standard Deviations?? Just how does the Central Limit Theorem enter into particle and field physics.

Has there been a sampling of a population? Why assume Gaussian statistics?

In any case this is NOT proof of the Null Hypothesis (i.e. the Higgs Boson exists). It best is is a statistical reason for not rejecting the null hypothesis.

And hold on to your cap. The experiment has yet to be carefully vetted by those who neither designed it, nor participated in it.

ruveyn


In experimental particle physics, most new particles are searched for by sampling populations of data in particle accelerators. The reason why it especially has to be done in the case of the Higgs boson is because it is such a short-lived particle that it cannot be seen directly and so they have to search for it by looking for an excess of the particles that it is expected to decay into. When I used the word "normal", I didn't mean that they used Gaussian statistics. In fact, I think the statistics depend on how the background is modeled.

About the announcement, let's put it this way:

They most definitely have discovered a new particle that is so far consistent with the Higgs boson. It only has to be a particle that looks similar to the standard model Higgs boson and provide the same kind of mechanism for giving mass to other particle. It does not actually have to be the exact same Higgs as predicted by the standard model.