Posted on 11/09/2014 4:21:25 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Last year CERN announced the finding of a new elementary particle, the Higgs particle. But maybe it wasn't the Higgs particle, maybe it just looks like it. And maybe it is not alone.
Many calculations indicate that the particle discovered last year in the CERN particle accelerator was indeed the famous Higgs particle. Physicists agree that the CERN experiments did find a new particle that had never been seen before, but according to an international research team, there is no conclusive evidence that the particle was indeed the Higgs particle...
"The CERN data is generally taken as evidence that the particle is the Higgs particle. It is true that the Higgs particle can explain the data but there can be other explanations, we would also get this data from other particles", Mads Toudal Frandsen explains. The researchers' analysis does not debunk the possibility that CERN has discovered the Higgs particle. That is still possible - but it is equally possible that it is a different kind of particle.
"The current data is not precise enough to determine exactly what the particle is. It could be a number of other known particles", says Mads Toudal Frandsen. But if it wasn't the Higgs particle, that was found in CERN's particle accelerator, then what was it?
"We believe that it may be a so-called techni-higgs particle. This particle is in some ways similar to the Higgs particle - hence half of the name", says Mads Toudal Frandsen.
Although the techni-higgs particle and Higgs particle can easily be confused in experiments, they are two very different particles belonging to two very different theories of how the universe was created.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
I heard somewhere that if the LHC can’t find the Higgs Boson then the math which predicted it needs to be looked at for errors.
Those look like Biggs Hoseons.
Could he whistle?
Vanishing socks generally show up in the hozone layer.
News reports about this “discovery” were often expressed with qualifications, and interviewed experts often refused to put their reputations on the line by bluntly saying, “Yes, this is the Higgs particle.”
I also thought the emotional response of the Physics community was subdued.
I'll guess that when the quark was confirmed in 1968, there was real jubilation and many physicists were thrilled.
The fact that it cost $6 billion to build the LHC, and another $1 billion each year to run and maintain it, might be a powerful incentive to mislead the public about what exactly was discovered.
I think I wound up having to edit it out of the excerpt, but the Higgs was predicted (actually needed, it’s a mathematical kludge) by the Standard Model; so were massless neutrinos. Since the late 1960s several longterm experiments were set up to detect neutrinos, and failed to turn up any (for all practical purposes; the level of apparent hits was the kind of background level one would expect to find in interstellar space). Since the Sun is quite close by, we should be awash in them.
Then about ten years ago, a really purpose-built experiment was begun. It appeared to find neutrinos. Unfortunately the detected whatevers had mass.
Soooo, it was decided that neutrinos had been found after all, but that they changed from massless to massful while making the trip from the Sun. Standard Model was upheld.
+1.
It’s all about the hunt for a Nobel Prize.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/
There were earlier attempts to find the Higgs, all failed, and the results of the LHC were not really in accord with expectations. But that’s okay too, if we already knew everything, there’d be nothin’ to do.
Thank you!
(My First ever!)
I wouldn’t want to know everything. It would take all the mystery out of life!
:-)
(I love these science threads, even though i don’t completely understand them! LOL!)
didn’t they notice the little “H” on each particle???
They were still scraping the whiteout off the glass from some earlier spreadsheet corrections.
There were a lot of bets placed on whether it was or not, so much so that bookies dubbed it the Viggs.
Okay, I’m not sure that was worth the setup.
Yes, it's exactly like that. Except instead of Reese’s Crunchy peanut butter cups, a grilled cheese sandwich with tomatoes. And instead of regular Reese's, celery sticks. Otherwise, that's it.
Good thing no one invoked the Electric Universe Theory. Otherwise people might think physics is just politically driven, black-ops controlled pseudoscience.
“Since the late 1960s several longterm experiments were set up to detect neutrinos, and failed to turn up any ...”
I think I saw somewhere that lack of neutrino emissions from the sun (if the theories about what stars are is correct) signals that the furnace, so to speak, has gone out, and the sun is beginning the journey toward expansion/collapse. What do you think?
On the USS Eldridge. . .perhaps?
So experimental results (mass-off, then mass-on) that didn’t fit the Standard Model were made to fit the Standard Model.
It’s the opposite of Lois Lerner’s emails. They did exist, then they didn’t.
I think it’s called Standard Operating Procedure.
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