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Physicists Say Can Find No Sign of 'God Particle'
Reuters / Yahoo ^ | December 5, 2001

Posted on 12/06/2001 4:46:03 AM PST by Darth Reagan

Physicists Say Can Find No Sign of 'God Particle'

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: higgs; higgsboson; kludge; peterhiggs; thereisnohiggs
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To: Physicist
Point of scientific accuracy: the Higgs mechanism may explain why quarks and leptons have mass.

Forgive a humble engineer for interrupting when physicists are speaking about the secrets of the universe, but something about your statement struck me as strange.

I am used to thinking about mass (gravitational or inertial) as being a fundamental property of things, not to be explained so much as described or measured. The concept of mass would seem to be more basic than the Higgs mechanism; how, then, can the Higgs mechanism explain why things have mass?

61 posted on 12/06/2001 9:15:29 AM PST by Logophile
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To: Logophile
The concept of mass would seem to be more basic than the Higgs mechanism; how, then, can the Higgs mechanism explain why things have mass?

Would you agree that degrees of freedom are more fundamental than properties? The Higgs mechanism works on a mathematical level by making an extra degree of freedom available to the elementary particles, and this degree of freedom manifests itself as mass. (There are also extra degrees of freedom left over known as Goldstone bosons; the Higgs particle itself is an example of a Goldstone boson.)

The physical interpretation of that math would go like this: the "massless" elementary particles are coupled to the Higgs field, which "dresses" the particles in a cloak of virtual Higgs particles, and it is this cloak that plays the role of mass. The stronger the coupling, the heavier the cloak.

62 posted on 12/06/2001 9:37:20 AM PST by Physicist
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To: Logophile
"how, then, can the Higgs mechanism explain why things have mass?"

You might want to look at the site, Higgs Revealed. It has several accounts written in response to a challenge to explain the Higgs boson on 1 page.

63 posted on 12/06/2001 9:47:32 AM PST by OBAFGKM
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To: Darth Reagan
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.

I can see it now, some poor SOB out there in a parallel universe is home watchin the evening news. Then....WHAM! We vaporize his Volkswagen.

Just Kidding :-)

64 posted on 12/06/2001 10:01:13 AM PST by LiberalBassTurds
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To: Physicist
Would you agree that degrees of freedom are more fundamental than properties? The Higgs mechanism works on a mathematical level by making an extra degree of freedom available to the elementary particles, and this degree of freedom manifests itself as mass. (There are also extra degrees of freedom left over known as Goldstone bosons; the Higgs particle itself is an example of a Goldstone boson.)

I might agree if I knew what you meant.

The physical interpretation of that math would go like this: the "massless" elementary particles are coupled to the Higgs field, which "dresses" the particles in a cloak of virtual Higgs particles, and it is this cloak that plays the role of mass. The stronger the coupling, the heavier the cloak.

Hmm... I think I see what you are getting at. The Higgs mechanism is a mathematical concept that may be interpreted physically. Degrees of freedom would also be a mathematical concept.

Allow me to try to explain the difficulty I had with your original statement. It is not that I think it was incorrect; but rather, it reflects a way of looking at the world that is different from the way that I, as an engineer, view it.

Consider gravitational mass. Everyone has an idea, acquired by direct experience, that massive objects are attracted to the earth. Since Newton's time, we have written F = mg. But does this equation "explain" or "account for" gravitational mass? My contention is no: F = mg is a convenient mathematical description of what we observe to happen (at least in most everyday applications).

Put it another way, does nature obey our mathematics? Or do we hope our mathematics describes nature? My impression is the mathematician or mathematically inclined physicist considers the equations more real than nature. Thus, Goldstone bosons are not objects but degrees of freedom.

65 posted on 12/06/2001 10:51:20 AM PST by Logophile
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To: Logophile
Put it another way, does nature obey our mathematics? Or do we hope our mathematics describes nature? My impression is the mathematician or mathematically inclined physicist considers the equations more real than nature.

Well, you asked me a question about how the model behaves, and so my answer was of course written in the context of the model being correct, which it may not in fact be. As for my original statement, "the Higgs mechanism may explain why quarks and leptons have mass," what it means is that--take a flyer for a moment--assuming that SU(2) X U(1) is the correct symmetry to describe a unified electroweak force and assuming that it is spontaneously broken by the Higgs mechanism, lepton and quark masses follow as an unavoidable corollary. (Yeah, I know that didn't make sense to you on its surface, but pretend it's an opera: ignore the Italian and groove to the music.)

But you are asking a deeper question, now. The way I look at it is that nature is, at its core, consistent with mathematical truth. When you talk about "our mathematics", you mean, "our mathematical formalism", that is, our choice of symbols and our methods for manipulating them. Using "our mathematics", however, we do uncover real mathematical truths. These truths are universal, and they do constrain the possible behavior of reality.

Mathematical truth is more fundamental than reality; mathematical formalism is not. We attempt to use our mathematical formalism in such a way as to uncover those truths that are relevant to the description of reality. When we have a description of reality (say, a description of how particles acquire mass) then we can make ironclad predictions about how nature would behave in such a universe, and test to see whether our universe does, in fact, match those predictions. The Higgs boson is one such prediction.

66 posted on 12/06/2001 11:49:28 AM PST by Physicist
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To: Physicist
These truths are universal, and they do constrain the possible behavior of reality . . . . Mathematical truth is more fundamental than reality.

Is mathematical truth discovered, or is it constructed?

Apparently, you would agree with those who say that mathematics exists to be discovered: in fact, mathematical truth is more fundamental than reality!

If pressed, I would probably say that physical reality is more fundamental, and that mathematics is something that we humans construct. Sometimes, if we are careful, our math adequately approximates reality.

67 posted on 12/06/2001 12:36:43 PM PST by Logophile
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To: Physicist; RadioAstronomer
In my high school physics class, a friend and I developed a parody model of a unified theory that we called "tapeball physics". The basic concept was that all matter was made up of little tiny pieces of tape. You had the tapons, which was the backing, and the stickyons, which was the adhesive. There were three classes of particles, and within each class were different ranks. The particles got bigger as they sought to improve their 'status'. It was an amusing intellectual exercise. Now, though, I wonder if we were on to something. Maybe WE were right all along!
68 posted on 12/06/2001 1:19:23 PM PST by malakhi
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To: Physicist
Ha! Shows what you know. The deep, dark secret is that the universe is actually MS-DOS 3.0 under the hood.

Actually, I think its running on an old VIC-20, with external cassette tape drive backup.

69 posted on 12/06/2001 1:21:42 PM PST by malakhi
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To: Logophile
Is mathematical truth discovered, or is it constructed?

Apparently, you would agree with those who say that mathematics exists to be discovered: in fact, mathematical truth is more fundamental than reality!

Look carefully at your language and mine: you are using "mathematics" to mean two separate things. I say mathematical truth is discovered, and mathematical formalism is constructed.

Mathematical truth is more fundamental, because our reality is only one of an infinite number of potential realities, but there is only one set of mathematical truth, and it is common to them all.

70 posted on 12/06/2001 1:26:44 PM PST by Physicist
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To: Logophile
The concept of mass would seem to be more basic than the Higgs mechanism

If mass were basic, then would it be convertible into something else, such as energy? What they do is rotate their dimensional unit matrices until they become relatively simple; then one of the dimension units becomes mass. But there are other possibilities.

71 posted on 12/06/2001 1:34:51 PM PST by RightWhale
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To: Darth Reagan
do not have a viable theory of matter.

Could that be used as 'reasonable doubt' in court to the possesion of any banned or regulated object or substance?;-)

72 posted on 12/06/2001 1:38:56 PM PST by StriperSniper
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To: Alas
there was light

Sure, but the world didn't resemble our present world until later. Stars and planets, heavenly bodies were created later. Why did they tell us that if not to make us use our ability to reason to figure out the universe? Such as to figure out what the firmament is. What is the firmament? How thick is it? How many other earths were created? Aren't we supposed to use our talents, or was that a NT kind of thing?

73 posted on 12/06/2001 1:39:59 PM PST by RightWhale
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To: RightWhale
.......And somewhere out in infinity, God is laughing!
74 posted on 12/06/2001 1:42:10 PM PST by UCANSEE2
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To: Physicist
I say mathematical truth is discovered, and mathematical formalism is constructed. Mathematical truth is more fundamental, because our reality is only one of an infinite number of potential realities, but there is only one set of mathematical truth, and it is common to them all.

I agree with the first part of what you say, but that mathematical truth would be common to ALL potential realities made me pause. Why should that be? There can of course be different algebras and different geometries. Or by mathematical truth do you mean some sort of meta-truth of which the truths of particular universes would be subsets?

75 posted on 12/06/2001 1:42:25 PM PST by malakhi
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Comment #76 Removed by Moderator

To: Physicist
Look carefully at your language and mine: you are using "mathematics" to mean two separate things. I say mathematical truth is discovered, and mathematical formalism is constructed.

I was not aware of using mathematics that way. Indeed, I am not sure what you mean. Can you give a (simple) example of the difference between mathematical truth and mathematical formalism?

Mathematical truth is more fundamental, because our reality is only one of an infinite number of potential realities, but there is only one set of mathematical truth, and it is common to them all.

That is quite a leap of faith, isn't it? Not that I have anything against faith, you understand. But how can we know that there are infinitely many potential realities but only one mathematical truth? (We seem to have wandered into the thickets of metaphysics, an adventure I am not prepared to undertake.)

77 posted on 12/06/2001 1:45:01 PM PST by Logophile
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To: Darth Reagan
To Darth Reagan and All: Well, IMHO, they can't find the "God particle" becuz it isn't physical matter, but spirit. Spirit is invisible to humans unless God allows it to be manifested in a physical form. I have thought for manny years that scientists would only be able to go back so far, break things down to the physical limits..but beyond that is God's spirit holding the universe together. It has been said that w/re: The "Big Bang" theory there are a few nanoseconds at the beginning they can't account for, hmmmm. I am not surprised by this finding at all. Well now I did wax philosophical didn't I? PS I like Hawkings books. Ghostkatz
78 posted on 12/06/2001 2:00:36 PM PST by ghostkatz
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To: UCANSEE2
God is laughing!

In the beginning was the word, and God laughed. 15 billion years and still laughing. Then God created Man in his image, so why isn't Man laughing? Well, some do.

79 posted on 12/06/2001 2:04:15 PM PST by RightWhale
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To: Darth Reagan
``We've eliminated most of the hunting area,'' Neil Calder, of CERN, told the magazine.

Have they "hunted" through the Bible any? Good place to start findin' God. :)
80 posted on 12/06/2001 2:04:54 PM PST by k2blader
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