'God particle' may have been seen

A scientist says one of the most sought after particles in physics - the Higgs boson - may have been found, but the evidence is still relatively weak.

Peter Renton, of the University of Oxford, says the particle may have been detected by researchers at an atom-smashing facility in Switzerland.

The Higgs boson explains why all other particles have mass and is fundamental to a complete understanding of matter.

"There's certainly evidence for something, whether it's the Higgs boson is questionable," Dr Renton, a particle physicist at Oxford, told BBC News Online.

"It's compatible with the Higgs boson certainly, but only a direct observation would show that."

If correct, Dr Renton's assessment would place the elusive particle's mass at about 115 gigaelectronvolts.

This comes from a signal obtained at the large electron positron collider (LEP) in Geneva, Switzerland, which has now been dismantled to make way for its replacement - the large hadron collider (LHC).

Before the LEP accelerator was decommissioned, physicists used it to send particles called electrons and positrons careering in opposite directions around its circular pipe, which had a circumference of about 27km.

When these particles collided, they created bursts of high energy. Such collisions themselves are too small to study but new, heavier particles can appear amongst the debris.

The Higgs boson is thought to be highly unstable and, once produced, should quickly decay.

Dr Renton cites indirect evidence taken from observations of the behaviour of other particles in colliders that agrees with the figure of 115 gigaelectronvolts for the mass of the Higgs boson.

"It's controversial. The data is possibly indicative, but it needs confirmation," said Bryan Webber, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge.

"Its mass is right at the maximum energy they could run the [LEP] at. But the indirect indications are that the Higgs boson should be close to that value."

Physicists have observed 16 particles that make up all matter under the Standard Model of fundamental particles and interactions.

But the sums do not quite add up for the Standard Model to be true if these particles are considered alone. If only 16 particles existed, they would have no mass - contradicting what we know to be true in nature.

Another particle has to give them this mass. Enter the Higgs boson, first proposed by University of Edinburgh physicist Peter Higgs and colleagues in the late 1960s.

Their theory was that all particles acquire their mass through interactions with an all-pervading field, called the Higgs field, which is carried by the Higgs boson.

The Higgs' importance to the Standard Model has led some to dub it the "God particle".

Dr Renton said he hoped that once the large hadron collider was up and running in 2007, the Higgs boson would be detected within a year or two.

The LHC is a more energetic accelerator which will allow a much higher mass range to be explored. It will also be capable of producing much more intense particle beams which means that data can be aggregated much faster.

You want to know who determines need? First, the guy in charge of the research program writes up a nice long grant proposal. The proposal goes on to a board who reads it and decides, "Is this reasonable? Is it interesting? Is it profitable? It it significant?" They assign it a certain rating depending on how those questions are answered. The grant proposals that score highly are awarded grants, and the ones that fail are not.

I'm currently waiting to find out whether our research group is going to receive a $100,000/year addition to our NIH grant of a couple million. If so, we'll build a cell culture facility so that I can test the efficacy of several drug partial structures against various strains of cancer cells.

Drug companies bring drugs to the market after spending an average of $500 million to $1 billion on research and development. They do most of their research in analogues of lead compounds, and some identification of lead compounds, but many of the lead compounds that end up bringing a drug to the market that might save hundreds of thousands of lives were discovered by a university research group receiving a federal grant of a million or less a year.

It's an entirely different thing from subsidizing women's studies programs.

You want to know who determines need?...The grant proposals that score highly are awarded grants, and the ones that fail are not

This answer isn't to the question I asked. I asked who determines need, not how the plunder is allocated. Like I said earlier, this peer review process is like a committee of foxes determining which fox gets what part of the hen house. The hens aren't given any say in the matter.

For example, you may come up with a proposal that sounds fabulous to the grant committee. Like "under what conditions rats, monkeys, and humans bite and clench their jaws*" You may think that this is worth $500,000 of taxpayer money to support yourself while studying. I think it is an absolute waste of money.

You might think studying "the sexual behavior of Japanese quail under carefully controlled laboratory conditions.**" is absolutely essential to the survival of civilization as we know it and allocate $120,000 NSF taxpayer funded greenbacks to it. I think it's an absolute waste of resources.

Your questions "is it reasonable, etc." aren't being asked to the right people. To mix metaphors the peer review process is simply a bunch of hogs with both front trotters in the taxpayer trough deciding which hog gets the most slop. The people who provide the money ie. the taxpayers, aren't given a say in the process.

Drug companies bring drugs to the market after spending an average of $500 million to $1 billion on research and development. ... research group receiving a federal grant of a million or less a year

You get the Big Fat Non-sequitor award for this statement. Most of the expenses to drug companies are compliance costs in jumping through the FDA hoops to get a compound to market. Their actual research costs are equivalent or less than the university research costs. A centrifuge costs x dollars. A scintillation spectrometer costs y dollars. A building costs z dollars. These costs are approximately the same for all players in the research field. Labor costs are about the same, but academics have to spend time teaching, working on committees and asskissing the administration*** so are less productive than their commercial counterparts.

It's an entirely different thing from subsidizing women's studies programs.

Only from your viewpoint, not from the viewpoint of the taxpayer. To the taxpayer the money is looted and spent on something he doesn't want. The parasites in the taxpayer supported "womens studies" programs feel just as strongly about their pelf and feel that their "contribution" (to use the word advisedly)is just as "needed" by society as you think yours is.

The answer is to let the market determine where to spend the money. Let each individual make contributions to universities, research foundations, buy stocks in corporations etc. I would suspect that the dreary job of testing chemical compounds against cancer cell lines would continue (HeLa?). I wonder how many womens studies types would be out looking for a job more in keeping with their talents (making coffee washing floors)

*1975 golden fleece award for $500,000 taxpayer dollars squandered by NASA and NIH

**1988 NSF and NIH

***I believe it was Geroge Bernard Shaw who once said the reason academic politics are so vicious is that there is so very little at stake.

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.