Thanks LibWhacker.
· List topics · post a topic · subscribe · Google ·
Posted on 01/31/2015 9:06:49 PM PST by LibWhacker
My head just blew up a little on one side.
So did they really find the “Higgs” Boson...
Or, after spending all of this money on this super conducting super collider...
that immediately broke...
did they, cook the books, to fake a “Higgs” ?
Was it your left side that blew up? Cause if it was then your head is all right now.
Only on one side? Not symmetrically? You’ve just disproved the whole theory! ;-)
And supersymmetry coalesces to M-Theory even further down the gravitation rabbit hole.
It sure seems real by the math. But is it really?
I think so. But I ain’t no physicist.
Supersymmetry solves two well known problems, one of which is a bit of clutter [the statistics problem] and the other is serious, the so-called hierarchy problem.
The statistics problem does not seem to be a big issue to me. In fact, I would call it a non-issue. [It would be interesting to have some real physicists weigh in.]
Classical particles are not fermions. But they are also not bosons, and the "correspondence principle" still heavily leaned on in many basic physics texts as a note-added-in-proof is not taken all that seriously by most physicists anymore.
We see non-classical behavior in "large" systems, and we see non-classical behavior in statistical mechanics at all temperatures and in large ensembles as well, and that's just all there is to it.
In fact, I would guess most physicists these days would take the opposite conceptual approach and say, "well, if quantum physics appears to reduce to classical physics in some scenarios, that's great. But it doesn't mean anything conceptually. You just have to account for why classical physics is a good approximation in some cases, without expecting that to always be true, even in the everyday world."
A great example of that is the behavior of metals. I got into an extended dust-up a number of years ago with a FReeper who called himself RightwingProfessor [who got himself banned for his nastiness on the Crevo Threads.] He maintained that you really don't need quantum mechanics "except in situations that never arise in ordinary life." This is complete baloney. It's impossible to explain the properties of either metals or semiconductors without Band Theory, which relies very heavily on Fermi-Dirac statistics, which in turn is completely unexplainable without a hallmark of quantum physics: indistinguishability. I don't think any practicing physicist today would claim that we have to find a way to reduce Band Theory to Newtonian physics to convince people that it works. [Another great example: lasers; which can't possibly be created in Newton's World. Thank God we don't live there.]
The hierarchy problem, on the other hand, is a serious issue. Basically it boils down to: "we don't understand why the weak force is so much stronger than gravity." That is a problem, but there are alternative explanations for it that don't require supersymmetry. So it is not an intrinsic weakness in the Standard Model. Extra dimensions is a known dodge, which might turn out to be correct if Supersymmetry isn't.
There are also some other things that Supersymmetry neatly explains. That's not surprising. Some very smart people -- a lot smarter than me -- have been working on it for a really long time. IIRC, something like, 60 years. But there are some alternatives which also explain, or take a stab at explaining these things without abandoning the Standard Model as well...
We shall see.
Actually as long as the head-collapse was a maximal Charge-Conjugation/Parity symmetry violation (CP to its friends), you could use that as a proof of the theory.
The SCSC didn’t break: it was never completed.
"Ceterum censeo 0bama esse delendam."
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
It’s obvious to me you know a heck of a lot more about this stuff than I do. I always appreciate your comments, and even if I don’t always fully understand them, I’m sure to learn something substantive from them, thanks!
I've read two quotes, before this, by physicists who very carefully suggested that the “evidence” for Higgs may not be conclusive.
I was not surprised.
Not because I understand the physics, but because of the way the audience of CERN physicists responded after the Higgs announcement was made.
In spite of the whoops and hugs and high fives, I clearly sensed that much of the “excitement” was forced, and that a lot of the scientists in that room had real doubts about what actually had been discovered.
I also wish the author would have explained in more detail which “superparticles” CERN plans to look for, and why that procedure would be any different than hunting for the Higgs.
Don't we already know that some superparticles exist anyway?
We use positrons in human medicine, and we know experimentally that antiprotons and antiquarks exist.
Genesis 1:3
Talking about CERNS. Not our Texas folly.
It was kind of the root impression I got from watching “Particle Fever” the other day.
It's probably a good time to post basic physics 101 again, for all those who might get confused...
But it your need an advanced physics refresher, try this one...
Of course, if all else fails, here is the real explanation:
enjoy!
;-)
Thanks B!
Physics crumbles continuously, as older physicists die off.
You are an astute observer of human behavior. Initially all CERN could really say was they had found a new boson [impressive enough in and of itself] with the correct mass to within 5σ [impressive also, but the usual criterion is 6σ although we have accepted 5σ in the past.]
However, over the last two years, more and more of the predicted properties required of the Higgs Boson have been confirmed for this particle. It's increasingly unlikely that this particle is not the Higgs Boson.
That is not to say that the Higgs has every property that's possibly been attributed to it. For example, does the Higgs Field give mass to every particle? Probably, but this isn't necessary for the Higgs Boson to be the symmetry breaking particle for the Electroweak Unification, which is what Higgs was theorized for to begin with. Is the Higgs Field the same field as the Inflaton Field [which caused the very early universe to expand at faster than the speed of light?] We will probably not know that for a while. That's also a "nice" proposed property of the Higgs Field, but not a necessary one. The Inflaton Field may manifest itself in a different particle.
Don't we already know that some superparticles exist anyway?
No.
We use positrons in human medicine, and we know experimentally that antiprotons and antiquarks exist.
Superparticles are not antimatter. They are complementarymatter. Here's the deal: Quantum particles with the same quantum numbers are indistinguishable from each other. This means that every electron [for example] in the universe is exactly the same as every other. This is completely different from classical physics, where, in principle, it's possible to label two distinct electrons in an atom and keep them straight. This is actually not possible in quantum mechanics. For example, in Helium, which has two electrons, there are not really two distinct electrons. There is simply a system which has two electrons in it, and there is no "electron 1" and "electron 2."
In order to make this work, the wave function you get when you combine two quantum particles into a two-particle system has to be either symmetric or anti-symmetric.
The anti-symmetric elementary particles are called fermions. Electrons, positrons, protons, anti-protons, neutrons, quarks, anti-quarks -- in fact all particles of what we think of as "matter" [and antimatter] -- are anti-symmetric, called fermions, and have 1/2-intrinsic spin quantum number.
The symmetric particles are the ones we usually associate with forces [energy, interaction, etc.] The symmetric particles are photons, gluons, W/Z particles, gravitons. All have integral intrinsic spin [0,1, or 2], symmetric wave functions on exchange, and are called bosons.
"Supersymmetry" is a theory suggests that every fermion has a corresponding "super" boson type particle that hasn't yet been discovered, and every boson similarly has a corresponding "super" fermion. So, for example, the electron [matter] has a superpartner boson called the selectron. The positron [antimatter] has a superpartner boson also, called the spositron. The photon [light, electromagnetic force] is a boson. It has a fermion superpartner called the photino [the photon is its own antiparticle, so there is no anti-photino.]
In the simplest version of the theory, the masses of the complementary superparticles would be exactly the same as their counterparts. An electron has a mass of 0.511 MeV/c2 so naively, we would expect its superpartner boson to have the same mass. However, for reasons that I can't explain easily, this turns out not to be true; the superpartners must be more massive than their counterparts.
As a consequence we may not yet have reached high enough energies to have seen the very massive superpartners. However, there are some reasons why if those masses are too much larger, a lot of the benefits of supersymmetry goes away, and there's no reason to try to save the theory any longer. I think 10 TeV/c2 is around where most Supersymmetry guys throw in the towel and say if we haven't seen the superpartners at that mass [/energy], then Supersymmetry isn't real.
[If you're REALLY interested, a Czech string theorist by the name of Lubos Motl has a great blog http://motls.blogspot.com/. I do not know him personally, but he is an "out and proud" conservative. His explanations of particle physics are quite accessible to the general reader.]
Supersymmetry allows physicists to come up with explanations for a number of "fine tuning" problems with the Standard Model. However, there are possible other explanations, like extra dimensions. Supersymmetry being "wrong" is not a deal breaker for the Standard Model.
See Post #19.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.