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Posted: 18-11-2011 12:33 Post subject:

Neutrinos still faster than light!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/nov/18/neutrinos-still-faster-than-light?newsfeed=true

Posted: 18-11-2011 14:47 Post subject:

Posted: 19-11-2011 13:24 Post subject:

So, again, you'd rather people didn't bother... so much for questioning the universe around us then...

Posted: 19-11-2011 13:31 Post subject:

But, just think of the enormous advances that might be made, if the same sort of money, being wasted on the Large Hadron Collider, was invested in aetheric scalar wave energy medallions and radionic bracelets instead, JerryB.

Free energy and a cure for rheumatics, for all! Laughing

Posted: 07-12-2011 10:04 Post subject:

Is the Higgs boson real?
Rumours abound that Cern scientists have finally glimpsed the long-sought Higgs boson. We asked physicists to share their thoughts on the elusive entity

Soon after Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director general at Cern, emailed staff about next Tuesday's seminar on the most sought-after particle in modern times, rumours hit the physics blogs that the lab might finally have caught sight of the Higgs boson.

I wrote last week that the heads of the two groups that work on the Atlas and CMS detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will give the talks. That in itself is telling – usually more junior researchers present updates on the search for the missing particle.

Last month, scientists at the lab said that if the particle exists, it was most likely to have a mass somewhere between 114 and 141GeV (gigaelectronvolts), where one GeV is roughly equivalent to the mass of a proton, a subatomic particle found in atomic nuclei.

A couple of blogs, including viXra and Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong, have now posted rumours that the Atlas and CMS teams see Higgs-like signals around 125GeV, though they say the evidence is not robust enough to claim an official discovery.

If the rumours are right and precede a discovery, it means the Higgs boson weighs as much as two copper atoms. That fits quite well with a theory called supersymmetry, which gives physicists a way to unify the four known forces of nature, a feat that frustrated Einstein to the grave.

But enough of the rumours. When the seminar was announced – and before the rumours surfaced – I asked some physicists to share, in a couple of simple sentences, their hunches on what gives mass to fundamental particles. Is it the simplest version of the Higgs mechanism, which gives us what is called the Standard Model Higgs boson? Is it a more complex kind of Higgs field? Or something else entirely? I hoped the replies would give a flavour of the range of views they hold.

Most got back to me. A few kept their replies to a couple of sentences. Some included technical language, and perhaps that was inevitable. One Nobel prizewinner said the Higgs boson doesn't exist. Another responded with a limerick.

Before I list the replies, here is some background. The Higgs mechanism describes an invisible field that, it is argued, split one force into two soon after the birth of the universe. Specifically, it divided an ancient "electroweak" force into the electromagnetic and weak forces we see at work today. The latter is seen in some radioactive decay processes, and is involved in creating sunshine.

The Higgs field splits the electroweak force by giving mass to the particles that carry the weak force (the W & Z bosons) and leaving the particle that carries the electromagnetic force (the photon) massless. The Higgs boson is the quantum particle associated with the Higgs field.

The simplest version of the Higgs boson is described by the Standard Model, a group of equations that explain how known particles interact with each other. There are plenty more complex versions though. Some of these could take ten years to rule out, according to Matt Strassler, a physicist at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

One more point. The Higgs field, if real, is responsible for only a tiny proportion of mass. Around 98% of mass of everyday objects comes from the energy stored up in the particles that make atomic nuclei, i.e. quarks that are bound together by gluons inside protons and neutrons. The Higgs field is thought to give mass to quarks and electrons, but that makes up only one or two percent of an object's mass. Let's say I weigh 80kg. That means less than a kilo comes from the Higgs field.

Here are the physicists' responses, in no particular order:

etc...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/dec/06/is-higgs-boson-real

Posted: 07-12-2011 10:22 Post subject:

This is why I avoid sub-atomic physics - I barely understand a word of that nonplus

Fortunately for most purposes we can just treat an atom as a fundamental unit and move on Cool

Posted: 07-12-2011 10:41 Post subject:

Ok, so if the HB is proven to exist, how further forward does it put us in our understanding of how the universe works ?

Posted: 07-12-2011 10:43 Post subject:

Posted: 12-12-2011 11:03 Post subject:

Oh, I'm not denigrating the work of investigating the atom, I'm just glad it isn't me. I don't need to know how electricity works to understand a computer, any more than I need to understand why water flows downhill(although as it happens I do). After all we were using electricity for at least 50 years before we had the faintest idea how (atomically) it worked.

Don't get me wrong, I believe, for example, that computer science lessons should start by teaching how computers actually work, logic gates and all that, because it is important to understand both the capabilities and the limitations of the technology (the current technology, that is).

But for most of us ther comes a point where - for some area or another - we just have to accept what we are told by specialists because we don't have the time or maybe the raw brain power to understand what is going on. For me, sub-atomic physics is one of those areas where I simply cant conceptualise what folk are talking about. I could cope when we had electrons protons and neutrons, but its gone way, way beyond that.

Posted: 12-12-2011 11:40 Post subject:

Posted: 13-12-2011 10:20 Post subject:

Guardian Science podcast - Cern's special seminar to discuss the latest results from the Large Hadron Collider

Our very own Snailet of Physics will be there. He tells me that it starts at 2pm Geneva time but is filling up already! He has a place though.

Seminar page, webcast, chatroom

Merry Higgsmas, everybody!

The Night Before Higgsmas

‘Twas the night before Higgsmas, when all through the lab,
not a student was stirring—except some undergrad.
The data were analyzed with lots of great care
in hopes that the Higgs boson soon would be there.

The press corps were nestled all snug in their beds,
while visions of exclusion plots danced in their heads.
And theorists in the US, Asia, and Europe
dug up the models that they were so sure of.

When out from Geneve there arose such a clatter,
We sprung from our desks to see what was the matter.
Away to the webcast—I must install Flash,
Reloaded the webpage, I hope it didn’t crash.

The introduction recapped the latest CERN run,
and gave the impression of more fun to come.
When, what to my wondering eyes should I see,
but a miniature bump… in Higgs to ZZ?

And with all of the press and media bigwigs
I knew in a moment that it must be the Higgs.
From ATLAS and CMS the results were the same,
and we whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:

Now Higgs! Now Englert! Now Guralnik and Hagen!
On Kibble! On Brout! On, Goldstone and Anderson!
To Stockholm in December, the Nobel prize,
But a prize that only three could realize.

We wondered about the “look elsewhere effect,”
But somewhere, someone just won their Higgs bet.
Not so fast, of course, it was only three sigma.
That’s okay—it could be a ‘discovery’ by summer.

Not so fine tuned, in fact still quite natural,
in spite of electroweak precision observables,
at least in the supersymmetric Standard Model.
There’s room for new physics, we can be hopeful!

The Higgs mass? A hint? A whisper, a whim?
Theory papers will fill arXiv up to its brim.
And with a white Santa-like beard, who is this?
Oh my, straight from CERN-TH—it’s really John Ellis!

His eyes — how they twinkled! His dimples—how merry!
He spoke many great things about supersymmetry.
I tried to refrain myself from asking if he knew
That he was still off by a factor of two.

But I really shouldn’t write that here on this blog
For soon I’ll be applying to be a postdoc.
I digress. The matter we should focus on
is what’s next in the search for the Higgs boson.

It is now up to ATLAS and CMS
To combine their data in a way that makes sense.
In maybe a month, maybe early next year,
We will have new significances to hear.

We gave up our breaks and went straight to our work,
Life as a grad student! But it sure has its perks.
What’s more exciting than the science frontier?
And by reading this blog, you can also be there!

We sprang to our desks, we downed our espressos,
All in the search for what new physics might show.
And John Ellis exclaimed, to the OPERA banditos,
“Happy Higgsmas to all, and forget those neutrinos”.

by Flip Tanedo (during a long post-dinner research break)

Posted: 10-01-2012 10:40 Post subject:

The BBC's Horizon was a special on the hunt for the Higgs Boson last night - it's on iPlayer.

Our Snailet can be seen as the camera pans past his office, earnestly plotting data. Or checking Facebook. Rolling Eyes

Posted: 11-01-2012 23:56 Post subject:

Posted: 15-01-2012 11:45 Post subject:

LOL I love the poem.

Posted: 09-02-2012 23:27 Post subject:

Just had a thought about the boson.

What if it was possible to inhibit objects interacting with the Higgs field?
Wouldn't that mean they would no longer have mass?

I'm quite sure it would be handy lol

Ok i don't know how to inhibit the field but if they can identify what a boson is (if it exists)would't it be within the realms of poissiblity?