Livewire

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As physicists prepare to announce highly anticipated results concerning the elusive "God particle" on Wednesday, scientists in the U.S. announced Monday that they’ve found evidence for the existence of what’s known as the Higgs boson.

Researchers at the Fermilab Tevatron accelerator near Batavia, Ill., have pulled together their final findings in the search for the elusive Higgs boson. Their announcement comes just two days before scientists using the powerful Large Hadron Collider at the European particle-physics center CERN plan to unveil highly anticipated results from their high-energy, proton-smashing experiments.

The Higgs boson is thought to give other elementary particles their mass. It is the only such particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics that has yet to be observed -- and it’s fundamental to our understanding of the universe, scientists said.


“We think the Higgs boson really gets at the center of some physics that is responsible for why the universe is here in the first place and what the ultimate structure of matter is,” said Joe Lykken, a theoretical physicist at Fermilab.

The Internet was abuzz with rumor and speculation Monday afternoon as reports surfaced that the scientists might not definitively confirm the boson’s existence Wednesday, or might even announce an entirely new particle, according to Nature. Four of the theorists who came up with the Higgs mechanism half a century ago will also reportedly be present.

The universe, the theory goes, is permeated by what’s known as the Higgs field.

“You can think of it as an energy field. We believe there is a Higgs energy field spread out in the whole universe,” Lykken said. Photons -- light particles -- are unaffected by this field. But as other elementary particles move around, he explained, “they feel this energy field as a kind of sticky molasses that slows them down and keeps them from moving at the speed of light."

When enough of that field is packed into a small enough space, Lykken said, it manifests as a particle -- the Higgs boson.

But these kinds of elementary particles are exceedingly difficult to create and detect -- they require high-energy collisions, and then they break down into other particles a mere instant after forming. Scientists often look for the particles created by their decay. And just as a dollar can be broken down into four quarters, or 10 dimes, or 95 pennies plus a nickel, the Higgs boson can break down into many different combinations of particles -- it’s just a matter of figuring out what exactly those combinations are.

The Tevatron researchers looked for the Higgs particle by looking for one combination of this subatomic coinage: a pair of bottom quarks. Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider look for two energetic photons to catch the Higgs purported signature.

But even though these energetic photons are thought to provide some of the clearest ways to search for a Higgs boson, it's still incredibly difficult to pick out a signal from all the "noise" around it.

One major problem is that, up until now, the scientists don’t know the Higgs boson’s mass. To extend the money metaphor: They don’t know whether they’re looking for the change from a one dollar bill or a fiver, or some amount in between. The Tevatron findings, however, appear to have narrowed that window of possibility.

Though the Tevatron ceased operations last fall, researchers have pulled out a few more useful results from the 500 trillion or so collisions the particle accelerator produced since March 2001. They were able to determine, for instance, that the Higgs boson -- if it exists -- weighs in somewhere between 115 and 135 GeV/c2, or about 130 times a proton’s mass.

For the moment, though they have detected what they believe could be evidence of the Higgs boson, researchers have tried make their results as ironclad as possible, with a 99.99994% chance of being correct. It’s a benchmark known as 5-sigma, sometimes called the gold standard of particle physics. Current experiments have surpassed 4-sigma, which (at about 99.994% chance) is just a hair less certain.

Though it may seem like an infinitesimally tiny distinction, this kind of hair-splitting makes a world of difference to scientists, eagerly awaiting Wednesday’s announcement.

Describing their state and appearance at a Fermilab news conference Monday morning, Lykken said, “This is what physicists look like when they’re excited. And also missing quite a few nights of sleep, I would imagine.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-fermilab-higgs-boson-hadron-collider-20120702,0,4043044.story

EDIT: Found another source that suggests confirmation of finding the Higgs-Boson, will update when I find it. Either way a huge development here in the world of physics.

Thoughts?

TRIFORCE89

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Wow, they beat them by a few days. I'd be very annoyed if I was a LHC scientist.

Also the description in this article makes it sound like The Force from Star Wars
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Well I find this development to be very interesting, it changes how we view mass and gravity. I do wonder how we will use this knowledge though outside of physics.
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Oh good, those chances seem very favorable that it is ^_^
I wonder if this knowledge can be used to create artificial gravity and arti gravity...
I'm currently working on some novels. If you're interested you can read them here:
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bobandbill

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I think we're a very long way from that, and there's no clear link between gravity/antigravity and the Higgs Boson either.

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Alex

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They hardly just discovered it. It's based on a proposal written by Peter Higgs in 1964, almost 50 years ago. They finally have found enough evidence to state that it exists. A proud day it must have been for Mr. Higgs indeed.

I'm no Physicist, but I hope this helps enlighten us on many more questions posed today and in the future.

bobandbill

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Mr. Higgs said he was very happy about it, haha. He also said from what I read that he hadn't expected to have ever seen these sort of results in his lifetime, which does show in a way how quickly such things have happened.

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Mr. Higgs said he was very happy about it, haha. He also said from what I read that he hadn't expected to have ever seen these sort of results in his lifetime, which does show in a way how quickly such things have happened.
Maybe if the Superconducting Super Collider was built alongside the US space program these tests could have been done much earlier. :P

Maybe in some Parallel universe lol.

TRIFORCE89

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Tired of the "God particle" name. I get the point of the name, although I've heard two versions:

1) Short for goddamn particle for being so hard to find
2) Because like belief in God, they believed the particle to exist although they couldn't prove it.

I like both explanations. But too many media outlets and people take the name to mean that they've either proven or disproven God's existence. Neither happened

Oryx

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Media outlets are really funny on this particle imo. They all want to report on it but only a few want to tackle trying to explain what the particle actually is, so the other ones just very carefully skirt that issue.


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Oryx

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I would disagree with that. While the implications and the details of it are obviously reserved for people that understand the science, Huffington Post had a really informative article that at least shed a lot of light on what the particle is and why it's so important. Before reading that I really had no idea what the point of the Large Hadron Collider was, but now I understand and could explain the basics to someone else.

You know what they say, if you really know something you can explain it to the general population in layman's terms.


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Gabri

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Basically, the Higgs Boson is a particle that generates a field, which by interacting with other particles gives them mass. That's why it's called God's particle, because without mass the Universe as we know it wouldn't be.

Even while being a major breakthrough, they are still unsure of what this boson really is, and to know this boson's properties it's required some more years of data collecting. What was done at CERN was proving that it does exist.

soulavenger

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I would disagree with that. While the implications and the details of it are obviously reserved for people that understand the science, Huffington Post had a really informative article that at least shed a lot of light on what the particle is and why it's so important. Before reading that I really had no idea what the point of the Large Hadron Collider was, but now I understand and could explain the basics to someone else.

You know what they say, if you really know something you can explain it to the general population in layman's terms.
You are right.If we understand the very essence of a topic or a subject, you can explain it in the most basic manner to any normal person.
Its just that most people don't take the initiative to do so. :D
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NarutoActor

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From what I herd form a couple of people (Might be wrong, they were just your everyday joes, not scientist.) Is that the reason they called it the God partial was because when you would die, you would suddenly lose 23 grams of weight. believers of the faith, would claim that, that weight loss was from the physical weight of the soul. (Skeptical of this myself, because for me, I always thought that the soul was spiritual, outside of physics)
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Livewire

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The name comes from the fact that the Higgs Boson gives mass to matter, a subatomic 'breathe of life', so to speak. I'm not sure where the 23 grams thing comes into play.

droomph

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I am glad to announce that scientists at LHC have confirmed the existence of God Particle. They are 99.9993% sure that it is the god particle.

It is a milestone in the history of science. :D :D
Dammit stop calling it the god particle. If anything it's more like the chubby particle. It's like an elephant-sized person. It's also very narcissistic, thus why it's so damn big. And it's most likely just one more path into unlocking many different questions. Even though it's 99.99994% confirmed, it's more like 0% proven that it is the only particle missing.

And yeah, though I'm super hyped about science taking another step into the unknown, I'm very annoyed at the media calling this the "God Particle". I mean, seriously? Everything is the God Particle, because they're what makes up everything in the universe. W/o (on their own) massless particles like an electron or a quark, there wouldn't be anything to "God" for the Higgs. If there were no Higgs, there would be nothing to "God" the massless particles. So just call it by its rightful name, Higgs Boson and/or some 125 GeV-weighing particle.

And that brings me to my other point, which is people saying Science and religion don't mix. I say that's total bullcrap. If anything, religion promotes science - wether or not Jehovah or Allah or whoever is god(s) and absolute dictator(s), it is a nice and fun thing to see what else your creator, wether it be Jesus or Cthulu, has made. It's like stalking another PC member's (or friend's Facebook) profile. And besides, looking at the many mysteries of the Universe helps religion in the fact that it makes you wonder that despite all the imperfections, it's so beautiful and amazing, and it makes you revere Him all that much more.

So yeah, mighta went off topic a little, but those are my thoughts!
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Livewire

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Dammit stop calling it the god particle.

But that's essentially what it is. The particle that above all others, dictates order in the universe, at a subatomic level. It's literally a creator, hence the name.

droomph

weeb

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Tbh I find it annoying. The only thing it is is a disturbance in the Higgs field. If it dictated all order in the universe, why would it be on the lowly standard model?

Mass isn't everything. It's just as important as electrons and quarks, maybe even less. The Higgs field is what gives things mass, and the particle is just there to prove that the Higgs field exists. So it's just annoying when people call it the God Particle. I cringe every time I hear that term, which shouldn't be surprising because every time they make a new discovery the media and the pop culture totally butcher up the discovery (IS IT THE NEXT AIDS EPIDEMIC????? WORBELDERPADERP).

If anything, I think we should call it Jesus, which is still cringeworthy but at least it's a bit more accurate.
did u no there r 21 letters in the alphabet
o i forgot 5
uraqt