Reanalyses of existing data have pushed the overall Higgs signal up to 4.3σ.
Image: CMS
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Gravity's Engines
We’ve long understood black holes to be the points at which the universe as we know it comes to an end. Often billions of times more massive than the Sun, they...
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Today the two main experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, submitted the results of their latest analyses. The new papers boost the case for December’s announcement of a possible Higgs signal, but let’s not get too excited.
First, there’s no new data in there—the LHC stopped colliding protons back in November, and these latest results are just rehashes that earlier run. In the case of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), physicists have been able to look at another possible kind of Higgs decay, and that allows them to boost their Higgs signal from 2.5σ to 3.1σ. Taken together with data from the other detector, ATLAS, Higgs overall signal now unofficially stands at about 4.3σ. In other words, if statistics are to be believed, then this signal has about a 99.996 percent chance of being right.
It all sounds very convincing, but keep your hat on, because the fact is that statistical coincidences happen every day. Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean Carroll points out that there is a 3.8σ signal in the Super Bowl coin toss. Does that mean that they’ve discovered a super-partner to the bowl? No. (If you don’t get that joke, don’t worry, it was written only as punishment for those who would).
After the LHC starts this spring, we’ll be much closer to knowing what’s actually going on. Right now, scientists are meeting in Chamonix, France to decide at what power to run the collider this coming year. The latest rumours are that the machine will push from 7 to 8 TeV, and it will also increase its luminosity (the number of collisions per pass).
For a little context more about what’s going on, check out this video of my trip back in November:
This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on February 7, 2012.
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19 Comments
Add Comment'Signal for Higgs Boson Particle Gains Strength - First, there’s no new data in there' - Right. I raise to 200.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf. And I mean IF. The particle exists, so what. Is it going to make your's or my life easier. No. It will just put money in the pockets of those studying "the particle", forever and ever.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh! Let's not forget the particle that makes up the Higgs Boson. Well that will take more several billons and years to "find" that one.
I know, right Pacer?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI mean, the nuclear atom? Quantum mechanics? Relativity?
Clearly that was no application for all that fundemental study of the universe stuff a century ago when it was being studied, and what's it ever gotten us in the meantime besides minor inconsequential stuff like GPS, global communications, research vital to the manufacture of nanometer-scale microchips, nuclear power, MRI machines, cryptography, flash memory, I mean, who cares if none of that stuff would exist without all that "useless" research they didn't see practical applications for a hundred years ago.
Clearly knowing the fundamental workings of the universe NEVER has any kind of applications that affect the everyday person.
I do not mean to be disrespectful or excessively negative, but when I read insufficiently qualified evaluations of the merits of the Standard Model of particle physics, scientific integrity would seem to demand that the following well-known facts are also considered.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe standard model of particle physics provides a reasonably good fit to many observations, and this is not surprising since it is a "model-building" effort, as opposed to a "theory of principle" like general relativity, but:
1. The Standard Model is primarily a heuristic model with 26-30 fundamental parameters that have to be “put in by hand”.
2. The Standard Model did not and cannot predict the masses of the fundamental particles that make up all of the luminous matter that we can observe.
3. The Standard Model did not predict the existence of the dark matter that constitutes the overwhelming majority of all matter in the cosmos. The Standard Model describes heuristically the "foam on top of the ocean".
4. The vacuum energy density crisis clearly suggests a fundamental flaw at the very heart of particle physics. The VED crisis involves the fact that the vacuum energy densities predicted or measured by particle physicists (microcosm) and cosmologists (macrocosm) differ by up to 120 orders of magnitude (roughly 10^70 to 10^120, depending on how one ‘guess-timates’ the particle physics VED).
5. The conventional Planck mass is highly unnatural, i.e., it bears no relation to any particle observed in nature, and calls into question the foundations of the quantum chromodynamics sector of the Standard Model.
6. Many of the key particles of the Standard Model have never been directly observed. Rather, their existence is inferred from secondary, or more likely, tertiary decay products. Quantum chromodynamics is entirely built on inference, conjecture and speculation. It is too complex for simple definitive predictions and testing.
RLO
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Discrete Scale Relativity
The majority of the worlds population has no meaningful access to any of the technology you mention. Sure we used technology to get to the moon. My phone has more computing power than on any of the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. So if your talking about making things smaller then yes. But if your talking practical. We will never go to the moon again for practical purposes. We lost several hundred pounds of moon rocks that were being studied for deep dark secrets. When it came right down to it they weren't even worth the price of a display case.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIrrelevant response is irrelevant?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGoing to the moon has nothing to do with the use of nuclear power or MRI machines, and your statement that not everyone has access to this technology is equally irrelevant, because it's based on three flawed assumptions:
1.) That the majority of the world's population does not have access to some level of these technologies
2.) That that access does not continue to grow for everyone
3.) That, even were the first two true, it would be preferable to have none have access to this technology as opposed to only some
You either missed, or entirely dodged the point that science that was entirely without practical purpose a century ago, that offered nothing but revelations about the fundamental workings of the universe, were all later turned into very practical technologies that do everything from allowing communication across the globe, to saving lives.
Were it not for this research, you wouldn't have your computer, nor the internet, to go and rant about how useless said research is.
Oh, and those "useless" space missions? You can also thank them, for global communications, modern computing, smoke detectors, portable water filtering, hearing aids, and numerous other technologies, all either creations of NASA developed in the course of space exploration, or offshoot technologies.
And if we want to extend your absurd logic further, it could be argued that Pasteur never should have disproved spontaneous generation, which helped develop modern germ theory, or that Newton shouldn't have locked himself in his house and conceived of calculus to aid in his physics research, or that Pythagoras shouldn't have developed many of our early mathematical axioms, or that Darwin and Wallace shouldn't have conceived of the very evolutionary theories that are today the basis of much of our modern medical knowledge.
None of these things had practical applications at the time either. Care to guess where civilization would be had these people thought like you?
Antibiotics? Nope. Electricity? Sorry. Any form of modern engineering? I'm afraid you'd have to do without. Simple health standards for the food you eat? You're not getting that either. Need I go on?
That more people don't enjoy the benefits of technology that came out of these research efforts is the fault of our current economic system, NOT particle physics. You seem to have a vandetta against these scientists for some reason and it reeks of agenda-driven statements that totally miss the mark. If you don't like fundamental research into the inner workings of the universe, stop typing on your computer because a lot of the technology in there was enabled by these research efforts!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Standard Model predicted the properties of quarks rather well among other things. It may be incomplete, but unless you have a better TESTABLE model (i.e. NOT String Theory), then you'll have to contend with the sizeable predictive power of the Standard Model. The fact that the preliminary data on the Higgs Boson fits right into the predictions of the Standard Model is impressive to say the least.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI won't go into details but NASA in most cases only refined what was already there. The technologies mentioned would all have been improved to the level attained today. Global communications. Transatlantic telegraph line over 100 years ago. Pacific Cable same. Hearing aid over 100 years ago. There will always be research and developement. Sometimes it just takes a little longer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGps. Most of the worlds exploration was done by using the stars as reference points. Sure GPS can tell me how to get from point A to point B but can it tell the idiot in front of me how to drive his car.
You have probably figured out that what I think is irrevelent in the GIANT scheme of things. What I do know is people have strived to improve what we know and how we do things. What it comes down to is how people use the technology learned. Children in Africa learn their Three R's while sitting on a rock or stump while using a slate that maybe 50 to 60 years old and been passed down from family member to the next. If that "next" person survives. Firsthand knowledge here. They don't have a dropout rate they have a no opportunity rate. People in the U.S. expect technology to be the saviour for mankind. All people really need are food, shelter and freedom to pursue a livelyhood for themselves. What I see is smart bombs that aren't and a computer that can use all the physics learned in the last few centurys to go into the universe to take observations just so we can say we did it before someone else.
I'm done.
Are you sure you're done? Finally! I couldn't take much more of those inane ramblings!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, Pacer, but no
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNASA developed those technologies into practical devices because there was a need to do so. Sure, they would have been developed eventually were it not JUST for NASA, but at higher cost and with longer delays were it done elsewhere. NASA's operating budget has never exceed that of many single tech companies, and yet no company has returned as much as NASA.
Furthermore, if we took your attitude, we never would develop them.
And while you may manage the ignorance to not realize that technology is particularly useful, it doesn't change the what it does for you.
You can spare us the "all we need is ancient tribal wisdom" BS, because thanks to science, when a wave of epidemic disease sweeps over a human population, we don't have to stomp around in the mud begging imaginary men in the sky to stave their wrath like YOU would have us doing, because for the first time in human history, our heads (well, not yours) are far enough out of our rear ends to know why it really happens, and to be powerful enough to stop it, as we've done with a myriad of illnesses.
Common bodily ailments and injuries that would have killed you several centuries ago are now minor and easily correctable.
Common disabilities that would have crippled you for life only a few centuries ago can be compensated for, if not just simply fixed.
All in all, thanks to science, you can live twice as long as your ancestors from only a short while ago, and you can be twice as healthy doing it.
Thanks to science, we no longer have to attribute our existence to made up gods and nonsense tales, because we know and understand who and what we are and where we came from.
Thanks to science, you get to spend far less of your time on survival, being enabled to do far more with far less, far quicker, giving you more time to become educated, take up personally meaningful pursuits, for you and everyone else to dedicate more of your lives, not just to surviving, but to enriching yourselves and offering some actual purpose to life.
And thanks to science, you get to waste that time science gave you to log onto your computer and complain about how science never did anything for you.
Seriously, why own a computer? If you don't like technology, why don't you put your money where your mouth is, and throw it away?
While you're at it, don't ever see a doctor or take medicine again, and don't let your family either.
Go on. Let's see if you're capable of not being a hypocrite.
The rest of us will go enjoy these benefits and the myriad of other I haven't mentioned.
Science isn't just about technology either.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo quote a Chemist Harry Kroto, "Some people think that science is just all this technology around, but NO it's something much deeper than that. Science, scientific thinking, scientific method is for me the only philosophical construct that the human race has developed to determine what is reliably true"
Now, Pacer may like the notion of stomping around in the mud and yelling at imaginary men in the sky, but I'd personally like humanity to become a little more evolved in its thinking than that.
Seen where the discussion here goes, I would like to add to my comment that even if I believe that the Higgs boson does not exist as it is in my unwashed opinion only a modern version of Lorentz's aether, that I fully support the work done BECAUSE of the Higgs. We might be looking for the wrong thing but then science has always been a permanent search for the wrong things leading to the right discoveries. Alchemists looking for gold and look where chemistry is today. Go, Higgie, get'em, boyson! (awful pun)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI came to this article via a link from Google+ and felt compelled to register solely so that I could tell you that you are my personal hero.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe last dude in the video sounds exactly like Sean Connery.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAsking about the purpose of science may sometimes lead us astray, since we may have to wait another 10000 years for a good application, or just ask: what's a purpose of this purpose? But since people inherently have some brain power, they should be allowed to exercise it out of their best free will, be it for sport alone. True, it's a poor civilization that still can't help the poor to help themselves, but it would also be a poor civilisation if it couldn't afford ample sporting activity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of the most desirable fruits of this reasearch might be the fall of the established physics on the universal scale, breaking the way for another Copernican-style or even Neolythic-style revolution.
You've read me before: I smell GRANT MONEY!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow, this video puts a face on the people who get to "play" with this $4 Billion toy. Wow!
Even if we fail, he says, we discover things that won't work.
$4 Billion. Wow.
I am right there with you. I am still betting they do not really find the Higg's, but that they are seeing what they want to see in the data (kind of like- only people who believe in ghosts ever see them- because they do not really exist). christina knight
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think when it is all said and done this will be revealed to be just another example of confirmation bias. where do we place our bets?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this