# I Have a Hadron for the Higgs Boson



## TaylorS

The CERN announcement has left me so giddy I feel like jumping up and down like a little kid.


----------



## Antrist

Raain said:


> Thats all!!!!
> 
> seems like a massive waste of money then, I mean c'mon it was called the 'GOD' particle the particle that explains how 'the mind of God works' that was supposed to give us a theory on *EVERYTHING*​.


Naming it the God particle was a huge mistake.

We're one step closer to discovering what gives everything in the universe mass. Manipulating it at this stage is out of the question.


----------



## Raain

Antrist said:


> Naming it the God particle was a huge mistake.


Naming it 'GOD' particle implies it's going to give the answers to everything ever asked and whether or not there actually is a God.



Antrist said:


> We're one step closer to discovering what gives everything in the universe mass. Manipulating it at this stage is out of the question.


But is it at-least now theoretically possible.

I am mostly interested in what new if any possibilities the fact that there is an actual 'Higgs boson' creates or opens up.


----------



## sofort99

Antrist said:


> Naming it the God particle was a huge mistake.


A while back, a guy wrote a book and titled it "The god damned particle" because of the difficulty they were having in finding it.

His editors didn't like that and change it to "The God Particle".

Idiots have been misusing the name it ever since.


----------



## wuliheron

Raain said:


> Thats all!!!!
> 
> seems like a massive waste of money then, I mean c'mon it was called the 'GOD' particle the particle that explains how 'the mind of God works' that was supposed to give us a theory on *EVERYTHING*​.


Yeah, and some people bought all that crap just as they still do every time someone starts name dropping God and talking about life, the universe, and everything. With any luck the effort won't be a complete waste of time and the scientists will find something useful about the particle, but I'm not holding my breath. It was the last major missing piece of the standard theory and they had to investigate it anyway just in case it produced something earth changing.

To put this into perspective, almost a third of the world economy today is based on electricity and electronics. It's big money and part of the entire military-industrial complex. They couldn't take the risk of not investigating the Higgs and someone else beating them to the punch if there is a way to manipulate mass. This huge Collider is just the fastest and most direct approach to finding out and it will require at least another year or two to find out if studying the Higgs will produce anything earth shattering. All we know for now is that it confirms the standard theory, supports super symmetry, and confirmation of super symmetry is likely to require much higher energies if it is possible at all.


----------



## Dark NiTe

sofort99 said:


> A while back, a guy wrote a book and titled it "The god damned particle" because of the difficulty they were having in finding it.
> 
> His editors didn't like that and change it to "The God Particle".
> 
> Idiots have been misusing the name it ever since.


This. I can honestly say, as House would say it, we can score one for the atheists with this discovery. Humans 1, God 0. In my opinion of course.


----------



## Wulfyn

Although I agree that there are more imminent problems to solve (such as overpopulation) I think there is plenty of non-physics money being wasted that could be diverted into that without having a go at the work being done here. Generally scientific discoveries can be split into those with immediately obvious application and those without. The discoveries that Newton and Kepler were making 400 years ago now allow us to watch satellite TV. There is no immediate application of this discovery (to be truthful we're not even 100% sure what this new particle is), but in a few hundred years humans might be looking back to us now and being thankful that we diverted resources into such discoveries.


----------



## Wulfyn

wuliheron said:


> My own suspicion is that quanta are contextual and the higher the energy levels we study the more vague the results will become.


I've been thinking about this. It's pretty remarkable just how heavy this particle is - that's a lot of energy to get it to behave in that way. Incredible.


----------



## Inveniet

So now we can make even faster computers and bigger TV's!
Yeah and the higgs-bomb naturally.
Takes out the entire planet in one big BOOM!

That is what progress is all about. =D


----------



## wuliheron

Wulfyn said:


> I've been thinking about this. It's pretty remarkable just how heavy this particle is - that's a lot of energy to get it to behave in that way. Incredible.


It's all relative. The human eye sees about 1/18,000th of the electromagnetic spectrum and these colliders have explored a similarly vanishingly small fraction of the energy spectrum.


----------



## nakkinaama

Nobel prize is just a prize. What does it mean, what does it do? Plus I find it ironical that the particles name is "the god particle".


----------



## Borrowed Lunacy

People are asking what is next, what is next is probably a concerted effort in solving the dark matter problem. The observable Universe accounts for only 4% of the mass we know to exist: the Higgs boson and the type of Standard Model can shed light on either what to look for or further avenues for heavier particles. 
People ask what is the practical use for theoretical Physics, why aren't they solving real world problems, and to this I say knowing what happens on a particle level leads to predictions about the Universe and it's ultimate fate, processes we are learning about now will determine if the Universe will tear itself apart in Billions upon Billions of years time. Besides Science is a part of the glue that holds international relationships together, sharing of knowledge is a sign that people can and do work together to solve issues, I can think of worse things to spend several Billion dollars on.


----------



## wuliheron

There are lots of things next not least of all the Iter fusion project which appears close to producing the first viable nuclear fusion reactor. If successful the next step would be to build the first experimental commercial reactor. Something even many of the skeptics of large scale physics experiments can get behind.


----------



## bromide

perkele said:


> Nobel prize is just a prize. What does it mean, what does it do? Plus I find it ironical that the particles name is "the god particle".


It gives you a boatload of money, that's what it does. Also media outlets tend to only latch on to a scientific discovery if they can make it sensational. New particle? So what? A god particle you say? HALT THE PRESSES, WE HAVE DISCOVERED THE MEANING OF LIFE.


----------



## Sapphyreopal5

The Higgs Field makes me think of water :happy:


----------



## nakkinaama

bromide said:


> It gives you a boatload of money, that's what it does. Also media outlets tend to only latch on to a scientific discovery if they can make it sensational. New particle? So what? A god particle you say? HALT THE PRESSES, WE HAVE DISCOVERED THE MEANING OF LIFE.


Yeah but I meant the fact that its name is the GOD particle but the whole thing in itself is related to science. But yes I understand that ITS THE MEANING OF LIFE and GOD presumably created it. The life I mean.


----------



## SenhorFrio

i was honeslty very upset when i heard this on the radio this morning. It's just another step in human smug-ness and another step away from choas and stuff


----------



## bromide

SenhorFrio said:


> i was honeslty very upset when i heard this on the radio this morning. It's just another step in human smug-ness and another step away from choas and stuff


Yeah, scientific advancement is for chumps. Bring back the chaos and stuff! Exorcisms for all!


----------



## Zetski

Kilgore Trout said:


> So did Stephen Hawking.
> 
> BBC News - Stephen Hawking on Higgs: 'Discovery has lost me $100'


This made me laugh so hard, what an awesome man.


----------



## SenhorFrio

bromide said:


> Yeah, scientific advancement is for chumps. Bring back the chaos and stuff! Exorcisms for all!


i was partially kidding, but i am somewhat questioning of the value of this kind of "just to find out" kind of science driven by nothing but a human desire to understand and explain everything. Maybe this new knowledge does/will have a practical purpose that benefits anyone other than theorical phyisicists, but that remains to be seen.


----------



## Zetski

Mick Beth said:


> Interesting, but I reason we should be investing more time into solving immediate problems such as overpopulation and global warming.


You're right, please take away the billions of dollars from these physicists, and put it into solving the *real* issues. Honestly, don't worry about the trillions a year going to corporate advertising, bank bailouts or military funding. Make those Higgs scientists go clean up beaches or deliver some vaccinations. 

Open your damn eyes.


----------



## wuliheron

SenhorFrio said:


> i was partially kidding, but i am somewhat questioning of the value of this kind of "just to find out" kind of science driven by nothing but a human desire to understand and explain everything. Maybe this new knowledge does/will have a practical purpose that benefits anyone other than theorical phyisicists, but that remains to be seen.


You don't honestly think governments and corporations would fund such huge projects just to satisfy some geek's curiosity? This kind of pure research has been responsible for everything from modern chemistry and electronics to the atom bomb. The people funding it now are the most likely to benefit from it.


----------



## CoopV

Sooo... now what? lol

We found a particle that may have started the big bang. So does this confirm the big bang is real? And now what?

Oh and what does this mean for all those theories out there like string theory, the membranes theory and biocentrism?


----------



## Borrowed Lunacy

eros5th said:


> Sooo... now what? lol
> 
> We found a particle that may have started the big bang. So does this confirm the big bang is real? And now what?
> 
> Oh and what does this mean for all those theories out there like string theory, the membranes theory and biocentrism?


The Big Bang has been confirmed for about 50 years. Background radiation set the nails in the coffin for steady state theory, and that theory started smelling funny when Hubble proved the Universe was expanding.
String theory has always been acknowledged by everyone as having no direct way to prove it, at least not with our technology. IIRC it relies heavily on super symmetry (SUSY), and this discovery as aforementioned in this thread hasn't removed SUSY entirely from the picture.
Cool fact: SUSY predicts there is more than 4 dimensions, some have 7 some have 10 or 11 and 1 theory has 26 dimensions. I'll say that maybe we are actually living in a real life flatland.


----------



## CoopV

Borrowed Lunacy said:


> The Big Bang has been confirmed for about 50 years. Background radiation set the nails in the coffin for steady state theory, and that theory started smelling funny when Hubble proved the Universe was expanding.
> String theory has always been acknowledged by everyone as having no direct way to prove it, at least not with our technology. IIRC it relies heavily on super symmetry (SUSY), and this discovery as aforementioned in this thread hasn't removed SUSY entirely from the picture.
> Cool fact: SUSY predicts there is more than 4 dimensions, some have 7 some have 10 or 11 and 1 theory has 26 dimensions. I'll say that maybe we are actually living in a real life flatland.


What do you mean flatland? And weird that I haven't heard of SUSY.. Or maybe I did but it hasn't been talked about as much as Kaku's string theory and some of the other ones.


----------



## sofort99

Borrowed Lunacy said:


> People are asking what is next, what is next is probably...


*If* what they have found at 125 GeV is the Higgs, then next is going to be figuring out how to hunt for 4th generational superheavies.


----------



## sofort99

eros5th said:


> What do you mean flatland? And weird that I haven't heard of SUSY.. Or maybe I did but it hasn't been talked about as much as Kaku's string theory and some of the other ones.


... How could you possibly know about string theory, but don't know about SUSY or flatland?

The world has just been turned upside down.


----------



## Antichrist

Exceptionally worthwhile research.


JOSH MARSHALL JULY 4, 2012, 12:28 PM 420
Coming off the massive success finally discovering evidence of the existence of the Higgs-Boson particle, CERN has announced plans to bombard subatomic particles together at a speed close enough to the speed of light to _*isolate Mitt Romney’s actual underlying position on whether or not the health care mandate is a tax.*_


----------



## CloudFire

Raain said:


> Thats all!!!!
> 
> seems like a massive waste of money then, I mean c'mon it was called the 'GOD' particle the particle that explains how 'the mind of God works' that was supposed to give us a theory on *EVERYTHING*​.


Physicists actually don't like calling it the "god particle". It was a name from a book that was originally supposed to be titled "the goddamn particle" by Leon Lederman because of it's elusiveness. Practical applications will come later on, in the far future, so it is not a waste of money. Same as with the discovery of the electron in the 1800's, that brought on the age of the computers and everything electronic that we know/have today; same with how the theory of relativity changed the world from the views of classical relativity and how that lead to things we use today such as GPS and the nuclear power plants that are fueling nations on the globe, etc. The Higgs field is the thing that theorized how things have mass and one of the reasons why our atoms are not falling apart along with all the other forces of physics. It also leads us one step closer to possibly one day to coming up with a theory that can tie together quantum mechanics and general relativity not to mention things such as dark matter and dark energy.


----------



## WickedQueen

> According to theory, the Higgs field *switched on* a trillionth of a second after the big bang blasted the universe into existence. Before this moment, all of the particles in the cosmos were massless and zipped around chaotically at the speed of light.


How did it switched on? Why? 
Is the field has been exist before or it only exist after the big bang? 
Is there another way to switch it on?



> But the Higgs field is *selective*. Particles of light, or photons, move through the Higgs field as if it wasn't there. Because the field does not cling to them, they remain weightless and destined to move around at the speed of light forever. Other particles, like quarks and electrons – the smallest constituents of atoms – get caught in the field and gain mass in the process.


Why is it selective? 
Why it doesn't work for light or photons? 
Why quarks and electrons 'get caught' by the field? 
How the Higgs 'caught' them?
And how, exactly, the Higgs help them to gain mass in the process?



> He said there could also be a mini-spoiler from the LHC's rivals in the United States. "On Monday at 9am Fermilab will try and steal a little bit of the LHC's thunder by announcing some new evidence for the Higgs from the Tevatron data," wrote Woit. "This uses the channel of a Higgs produced with a W or Z [bosons that carry the weak nuclear force], *the Higgs then decaying to pairs of b-quarks*."


What does the bold line means?


----------



## Briguy

Raain said:


> Thats all!!!!
> 
> seems like a massive waste of money then, I mean c'mon it was called the 'GOD' particle the particle that explains how 'the mind of God works' that was supposed to give us a theory on *EVERYTHING*​.


I assume by waste of money you are referring to the LHC, as a physics student I can assure you that the LHC was constructed for many other reasons than simply finding the Higgs Boson, many other particles have been discovered, and theories tested. For instance a relativistic gravity test. Also, the EU built this so what does the rest of the world care about cost? This story is just "sexy", that's why its receiving the attention that it is currently gleaning from the public, science makes the news like this maybe once a decade so I am going to enjoy it. As far as a theory of everything goes, the Higgs field is an important part in understanding other dimensions, so we can now move forward on understanding how the universe behaves as well as the hidden universes all around us.


----------



## Dark NiTe

If humanity is around in a few hundred years, we will either appreciate the current expenditures on these pursuits regardless of the usefulness, or we will for the most part have much bigger problems to think about in favor of relatively trivial pursuits.


----------



## NekoNinja

Mick Beth said:


> Interesting, but I reason we should be investing more time into solving immediate problems such as overpopulation and global warming.


Says the person using the internet to chat on forums. Without various advances in physics within the last century, many just several decades ago, you wouldn't be able to be here right now talking because there would be no computers, internet or cell phones among many other things. No one knows the application that something can be used for until it's studied and researched. You might try to claim that we should be trying to discover other things and that something like Einstein's theories was obviously important because those discoveries gave us X, Y and Z. However, you can only say this because of hindsight. At the time of the things being discovered no one could see into the future at what would come of it. The simple fact is that we can't know what will really come of this, and in reality there are actually scientists working on problems like global warming and even food production and enhancement.


----------



## jeffbobs

haha 

Higgs is an atheist, and is displeased that the Higgs particle is nicknamed the "God particle",[SUP][27][/SUP] as he believes the term "might offend people who are religious".[SUP][28][/SUP] Usually this inappropriate nickname for the Higgs boson is attributed to Leon Lederman, the author of the book _The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?_, but the name is the result of the insistence of Lederman's publisher: Lederman had originally intended to refer to it as the "goddamn particle".[SUP][29][/SUP]

true story, it's also the reason god is called god, it was originally "where is that goddam diety" and was just shorted to god


----------



## Briguy

benr3600 said:


> If humanity is around in a few hundred years, we will either appreciate the current expenditures on these pursuits regardless of the usefulness, or we will for the most part have much bigger problems to think about in favor of relatively trivial pursuits.


That's like saying understanding gravity or special relativity is not important to the human race. Without Newtons 2nd law F=ma, we would be stuck in the 19 century. Without special relativity programming a GPS device would be impossible. Physics is the foundation of the universe, thus if you remove that foundation we would lose everything, from electronics to the internal combustion engine to the fiber optics your internet connection runs on.


----------



## Dark NiTe

Briguy said:


> That's like saying understanding gravity or special relativity is not important to the human race. Without Newtons 2nd law F=ma, we would be stuck in the 19 century. Without special relativity programming a GPS device would be impossible. Physics is the foundation of the universe, thus if you remove that foundation we would lose everything, from electronics to the internal combustion engine to the fiber optics your internet connection runs on.



I said "relatively" because, compared to finding out how to prevent the food and water shortages that affect millions of people in ways that they would gladly sacrifice these luxuries you mention for a solution to, replacing a map and traditional compass with a GPS is relatively trivial. However I am not opposed to the first world fostering understanding of the world/universe. I just think ideally, things like this can wait until the expenses are immaterial and/or we have more dire problems solved, but I fear they never will be while we are a slave to currency/materialism.


----------



## hylogenesis

*for science!*


----------



## La Li Lu Le Lo

Yay! I guess...


----------



## Antrist

sofort99 said:


> A while back, a guy wrote a book and titled it "The god damned particle" because of the difficulty they were having in finding it.
> 
> His editors didn't like that and change it to "The God Particle".
> 
> Idiots have been misusing the name it ever since.





> Higgs is an atheist, and is displeased that the Higgs particle is nicknamed the "God particle",[28] as he believes the term "might offend people who are religious".[29] Usually this inappropriate nickname for the Higgs boson is attributed to Leon Lederman, the author of the book The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?, but the name is the result of the insistence of Lederman's publisher: Lederman had originally intended to refer to it as the "goddamn particle".


-Peter Higgs, Wikipedia.


----------



## Mick Beth

NekoNinja said:


> Says the person using the internet to chat on forums. Without various advances in physics within the last century, many just several decades ago, you wouldn't be able to be here right now talking because there would be no computers, internet or cell phones among many other things. No one knows the application that something can be used for until it's studied and researched. You might try to claim that we should be trying to discover other things and that something like Einstein's theories was obviously important because those discoveries gave us X, Y and Z. However, you can only say this because of hindsight. At the time of the things being discovered no one could see into the future at what would come of it. The simple fact is that we can't know what will really come of this, and in reality there are actually scientists working on problems like global warming and even food production and enhancement.


And, what may the application be for this discovery? Excuse me for being cynical, but nothing that can’t bring a new mentality is of any matter to me.


----------

