Posted on 12/06/2001 4:46:03 AM PST by Darth Reagan
LONDON (Reuters) - After years of searching and months of sifting through data, scientists have still not found the elusive sub-atomic particle that could help to unravel the secrets of the universe, a science magazine said on Wednesday.
The Higgs boson, the missing link which could explain why matter has mass and other fundamental laws of particle physics, is still missing -- and physicists fear it may not exist.
``It's more likely than not that there is no Higgs,'' John Swain, of Northeastern University in Boston, told New Scientist magazine.
Scientists have been searching for the Higgs particle ever since Peter Higgs of Edinburgh University first proposed in the 1960s that it could explain why matter has mass.
Using the world's largest particle accelerator at the CERN (news - web sites) nuclear physics lab near Geneva, scientists had hunted for the Higgs boson, which has been dubbed the ``God particle,'' until the accelerator was closed late last year.
Accelerators hurl particles at nearly the speed of light on a collision course to break them up so scientists can study the nature of matter.
Scientists of the Electroweak Working Group at CERN, who had searched for the Higgs, said they had found no evidence of it at the energies where they had expected to find it.
``We've eliminated most of the hunting area,'' Neil Calder, of CERN, told the magazine.
New Scientist said the problem for physicists is that, without the Higgs particle, they do not have a viable theory of matter.
CERN adjourned the search for the Higgs when it closed the LEP (Large Electron-Positron) accelerator, but it is building a Large Hadron Collider that will be able to smash particles at even higher energies in 2007.
Probably, more than likely...just disappointed.
You would insist wrongly, then. There is a mass/energy duality involved in both "nuclear" and "chemical" reactions. Nuclear reactions are just more energetic, generally a million times more energetic, so the mass/energy loss is about a million times greater than chemical reactions.
But there is indeed a mass/energy conversion involved even in chemical reactions. But it is so small it is next to impossible to measure the mass change. For instance, if you lit a match in a sealed oxygen filled glass ball, and the only thing that could get out would be light and warmed (conducted) the weight(mass) would go down in proportion to the energy lost to light and heat. Of course, it is such a very very tiny amount no actual scale would note the difference.
Fundies really do cheer human ignorance -- they seem to revel in it. Learning new things is a threat to them and their religious beliefs. Scarey people.
Two physics guys fighting over a girl.
Even worse: Two physics guys fighting over a physics girl.
Boy, is someone just begging for a particle beam to come flying up his a$$. (Who knows, that might just produce confirmation of the existence of the Higgs Boson. It would like be for science, you know.)
;~)
I wouldn't classify myself as a "fundie" but as a Christian I have no problem with the concept of a God who is all-knowing, all-powerful, and ever-present. He stands outside our boundaries of time and knowledge.
I fully believe that the search for truth in science will only point to God the creator. I'll admit that maybe all the knowledge is out there for man to discover. But when I hear of the search for something called the "God Particle" I tend to think that it's less about a quest for knowledge than it is about the quest for the "power" to create.
When we don't have an answer, it does not mean God's word is inaccurate, it simply means that we, His creations, including you and the scientist of the world, are not smart enough to understand.
Have a nice day,
Alas
This is very much an intuitionist statement, i.e., it's obvious that 7 is prime.
A formalist, however, goes to great pains to prove that 7 is prime using no more than his axiom set. On the way he incidently defines 7, defines multiplication, and in the process also finds that multiplication commutes. The 7's primeness and multiplication's commutivity have equal standing.
Kronecker might have been the consummate intuitionist in stating that only integers are obvious. He also argued that infinity must be excluded from mathematics. But since he couldn't do much useful mathematics from those positions he blithely used all manner of "non-intuitionist" notions in his serious work. It was all a matter of not allowing his philosophy to interfere with his industry.
Just because I say that objective mathematical truth exists, it doesn't mean that I think that formalism is unnecessary. On the contrary, formalism is the means by which we get at mathematical truth, so the limitations of formalism cannot be avoided. But regardless, our theorems "touch" things that exist independently of our choices of description.
It's like the difference between a description of the Rock of Gibraltar and the Rock itself. I can write about it in a hundred different languages, and some of the things I say in one language won't even make sense when translated into another. Now a formalist comes along and points out that the letters that I put onto paper are a shifting sand: many readings are possible even for a given statement, and not all are equivalent, despite my pains to make the descriptions as accurate as possible. Perhaps he even concludes on the basis of this that the Rock doesn't exist.
My answer is that the descriptions aren't the Rock itself. I can't get the Rock onto paper. But nevertheless the Rock has an objective existence that is independent of whatever I write about it, and the statements do refer to it. Insofar as the statements are correct in the context of their own languages, the statements reflect the properties of the Rock.
A formalist, however, goes to great pains to prove that 7 is prime using no more than his axiom set.
Fair enough, perhaps that was a bad example. Here's another: Gödel's theorem. It's different from the primality of seven, because it doesn't assume a formal system. It is a statement about all possible formal systems. It goes beyond formalism; it's true before I even pick an axiom set. Here's another (related) example: the universality of computation.
So who's the chick you two are trying to impress?
They make adult films like that.
In "chemical" reactions we usually have some sort of electron orbital change. We also have "thermal" reactions, in which the kinetic energy (energy of motion)of the molecule can be gained or lost (velocity speeded up or slowed down.)
As for the "motion" one, remember that Einstein said that as objects approach the speed of light they get infinitely massive. Well, they gain mass at slower speeds too -- the mass gain is due to the energy associated with motion. (Relativity involved here.)
I suppose it is harder to see the mass gain/loss of electron orbital changes -- but they usually involve imparting or gaining energy from the motion of the particle, or the emission or recption of a photon (light.)
You can see that photons carry off energy -- and that's also your mass loss.
So an exothermic reaction (chemical or thermal) carries away mass/energy in either emitted photons or the transfer of motion energy to a neighbor molecule through collision.
Or how to count 32nd notes in 4/4 time!
Hah! You engineers! I'm still suffering confusion because the negative pole on my car battery has a big "+" sign on it.
Time for the neutron howitzer!
(This is a great thread!!)
It's really quite simple. Here are two little mnemonic devices they taught me in graduate school:
APE = Anode Positive in Electrolysis (i.e., charging)
NAG = Negative Anode in Galvanic operation (i.e., discharging)
Of course, you must remember which is the anode and which is the cathode. The anode is the place where oxidation occurs; the cathode is where reduction occurs.
You also have to remember the oxidation and reduction half-reactions. For the conventional lead-acid battery, the half-reactions are
Pb(s) + HSO4- = PbSO4(s) + H+ + 2e-
PbO2(s) + HSO4- + 3H+ + 2e- = PbSO4(s) + 2H2O
That's all there is to it. Simply remember these simple points next time you have to jump-start your car. (Wait a second: Which pole gets the red lead, and which gets the black? I can never remember.)
My physics teacher was vague on the mass to energy conversion in chemical reactions. You have made at least 10 times as much sense as old "what's-'is-name".
Would the mass loss in a nuclear reaction be compensated in the relativistic way by the high speed of the resultant particles?
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