Physicists to Make Major 'God Particle' Announcement Next Week

[웃 910]

Scientists think they are getting closer to finding the Higgs boson particle, as they speed particles around the Large Hadron Collider at near light-speed. Here, the lines represent possible

paths of particles produced by collisions in the detector, as part of the ALICE experiment.

CREDIT: CERN

Physicists to Make Major 'God Particle' Announcement Next Week

Scientists at the Swiss lab that hosts the world's largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), will announce their latest findings in the search for an elusive subatomic particle called the Higgs boson or "God particle," next week. Already blogs and online news outlets are abuzz with speculation about the big announcement.

The CERN lab in Geneva has cautioned that LHC's ATLAS and CMS experiments have not accrued enough

data

to make any conclusive statement on the existence or non-existence of the Higgs boson, an as yet undetected particle thought to give all other particles their mass.

Even so, the BBC is reporting that a "respected scientist from the CERN particle physics laboratory has told the BBC he expects to see 'the first glimpse' of the Higgs boson next week."

The LHC is a 17-mile (27-kilometer) long underground circular tunnel where particles are smashed into one another at near light speed. The collisions produce enormous amounts of energy, releasing various exotic particles that may include the Higgs boson.

Detecting the Higgs boson would be huge, physicists say, because particles with mass are an integral component of the physical world. The particle's ability to explain so much about the universe earned it the moniker, at least among the public, of the "God particle." [Twisted Physics: 7 Mind-Blowing Findings]

The particle is thought to have a mass of between 114 and 185 gigaelectronvolts, or GeVs. (One GeV is equivalent to the mass of a proton, the positively charged particle in the nucleus of an atom.)

Tantalizing data spikes between 120 and 140 GeV suggest that the Higgs mass might lie in that range, the LHC teams reported in July. However, the data at that stage was not reliable enough to make any scientific claims, and could simply represent statistical glitches, the scientists said.

Before that presentation, in April 2011, a leaked note from one of the teams suggested that a Higgs boson announcement might be forthcoming. Yet there has still been no definitive word on the Higgs from LHC or elsewhere.

Since then, the teams have been collecting more and more observations of what's called events, when particles collide. Here's how CERN scientists describe the importance of more data:

"Imagine that all selected events were like the contents of a small lake," they wrote on a physics blog called Quantum Diaries. "If a hidden fish creates a disturbance underneath, we will see a wave on a calm water surface. But of course, if there is some wind, ripples would appear, making it harder to spot the wave caused by a fish. The presence of a Higgs boson would do just that: appear like a wave on top of the calm water. As with the wind, the background creates small ripples one could easily mistake for a signal. The background can also fluctuate following statistical laws, like a random wind. In our case, having more data is equivalent to having more fish in the same spot, making their presence easier to detect."

Many hope the impending presentation will be a big announcement resulting from a sufficient accumulation of data, though so far CERN is keeping a buttoned lip if that's the case.

http://www.livescien...ement-week.html

Edited December 9, 2011 by Lord Infamous

[웃 910]

Wait a second? What happened when the young kids in their 20s (the elderly at the time) tried to build a tall house (the story of babble)? The Gods threw a temper tantrum and made all of their languages different.

Why were The Gods so active in the Buy-Bull in the old days?

Why not now? Atheist Scientists are searching for the Gods Particle. Great time to wake up from thousands of years of hibernation and do something....Anything!

Edited December 9, 2011 by Lord Infamous

[Misha & Ira 113]

Wait a second? What happened when the young kids in their 20s (the elderly at the time) tried to build a tall house (the story of babble)? The Gods threw a temper tantrum and made all of their languages different.

Why were The Gods so active in the Buy-Bull in the old days?

Why not now? Atheist Scientists are searching for the Gods Particle. Great time to wake up from thousands of years of hibernation and do something....Anything!

Ahh...so you need a miracle....

[Dakine10 5,452]

Wait a second? What happened when the young kids in their 20s (the elderly at the time) tried to build a tall house (the story of babble)? The Gods threw a temper tantrum and made all of their languages different.

Why were The Gods so active in the Buy-Bull in the old days?

Why not now? Atheist Scientists are searching for the Gods Particle. Great time to wake up from thousands of years of hibernation and do something....Anything!

It's great. You have made tons of posts offering proof that science exists. That really helps that small group of people who don't believe there is such a thing as science.

So now do you think you can offer some proof that God doesn't exist? That would be really impressive. Otherwise it all seems pointless. If no one can prove God exists, and no one can prove he doesn't, we're basically going round in circles.

[웃 910]

It's great. You have made tons of posts offering proof that science exists. That really helps that small group of people who don't believe there is such a thing as science.

So now do you think you can offer some proofthat God doesn't exist? That would be really impressive. Otherwise it all seems pointless. If no one can prove God exists, and no one can prove he doesn't, we're basically going round in circles.

Science makes gods less and less necessary.

[Dakine10 5,452]

Science makes gods less and less necessary.

Many people reconcile them just fine.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

You must be getting very scared. Be confident in your non belief. No need to try and convince others. It makes you look even more foolish.

[Misha & Ira 113]

So now do you think you can offer some proof that God doesn't exist? That would be really impressive. Otherwise it all seems pointless. If no one can prove God exists, and no one can prove he doesn't, we're basically going round in circles.

He never offers proof...only his beliefs or the opinions of others.

[웃 910]

Higgs boson hunters scent their elusive quarry at the LHC

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are widely expected to announce evidence of the Higgs boson on Tuesday

Physicists are bracing themselves for news that the most sought-after fundamental particle of modern times has been glimpsed at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva.

The heads of the teams spearheading the search for the Higgs boson atCern, the European physics laboratory, have called a special seminar to announce their findings on Tuesday afternoon.

They will describe progress in the hunt for the missing particle, which has been the most glittering prize in particle physics since it was predicted in 1964 from equations drawn up with pencil and paper by Peter Higgs at Edinburgh University.

The Higgs boson is the last remaining piece of the Standard Model, the set of mathematical rules that describe how all the known particles in nature interact with one another.

Lisa Randall, a physicist at Harvard University, told the Guardian: "It is difficult to think of alternatives that are consistent theoretically – and with everything observed to date – that don't involve the Higgs mechanism.

"I think the most likely answer is a conventional, light Higgs boson. When asked what I thought the odds were in a popular lecture, I surprised myself by saying 70%. I've even bet chocolate based on those odds."

The Higgs boson is the signature particle of a theory that says the vacuum of space is filled with an invisible field that stretches to every corner of the universe. The field is thought to give mass to fundamental particles, such as the quarks and electrons that make up atoms. Without the field, or something like it, these particles would weigh nothing at all and hurtle around at the speed of light. There would be no atoms as we know them, nor stars or planets.

Earlier this week, the scientific director at Cern, Sergio Bertolucci, hinted that the lab might have seen the elusive particle, adding weight to rumours that were already spreading on physics blogs.

Several blogs claimed that both Cern teams had results pointing to a Higgs particle with a mass of 125GeV (gigaelectronvolts), where one GeV is roughly the mass of a proton. At 125GeV, the Higgs particle would weigh as much as two copper atoms.

The director general of Cern, Rolf-Dieter Heuer, has warned staff that the announcement will not be conclusive, meaning the results are too weak to claim an official discovery. Results in particle physics are ranked on a scale from one to five "sigma".

One and two sigma results mean very little. A three sigma result counts as an "observation", while a five sigma result is enough to claim a formal discovery. There is less than a one in a million chance of a five sigma result being a statistical fluke.

Fabiola Gianotti and Guido Tonelli, who lead the teams that work on the collider's cathedral-sized Atlas and CMS detectors, will present the results at the seminar. The collider, which occupies a 27km tunnel beneath the French-Swiss border, crashes protons together at close to the speed of light.

The Higgs particle is too unstable to be seen directly in the tiny fireballs created in the collider, but it should leave a telltale signature in the machine's detectors as it disintegrates into familiar particles.

The anticipated results have sparked excitement that goes beyond the discovery of the particle itself, with some physicists claiming it would point to a fresh understanding of the structure of the cosmos.

A Higgs boson with the rumoured mass fits well with a theory calledsupersymmetry that says nature is built from twice as many kinds of particles as have been observed.

"They should have enough data to make an interesting statement. It could be that they have a hint, but are not sure if it's real," said John Ellis, former head of theoretical physics at Cern. "The picture is still confused, but a Higgs particle that weighed anywhere between 115GeV and 125GeV would be just dandy for supersymmetry."

"If the two detectors have essentially coincident effects of 2.5 to three sigma, there is no doubt of the discovery," said Gordon Kane, director of the Michigan Centre for Theoretical Physics.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/dec/09/higgs-boson-hunters-lhc?INTCMP=SRCH