Large Hadron Collider Rival Tevatron 'Has Found Higgs boson', say Rumours

Telegraph ^ | July 12, 2010 | Tom Chivers

[lbryce]

Tommaso Dorigo, a physicist at the University of Padua, has said in his blog that there has been talk coming out of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, that the Higgs has been discovered.

The Tevatron, the huge particle accelerator at Fermi - the most powerful in the world after the LHC - is expected to be retired when the CERN accelerator becomes fully operational, but may have struck a final blow before it becomes obsolete.

If one form of the rumour is to be believed - and Prof Dorigo is extremely circumspect about it - then it is a "three-sigma" signature, meaning that there is a statistical likelihood of 99.7 per cent that it is correct. But, of course, that is only if the rumour is to be believed.

In the post, titled "Rumors about a light Higgs", Prof Dorigo said: "It reached my ear, from two different, possibly independent sources, that an experiment at the Tevatron is about to release some evidence of a light Higgs boson signal.

"Some say a three-sigma effect, others do not make explicit claims but talk of a unexpected result."

While media attention has been focusing on the LHC, the Tevatron has been quietly plugging away in the search for Higgs. In the 27 years since it was first completed (it has been regularly upgraded since then) it has discovered a quark and observed four different baryons. While it has not been able to pinpoint the elusive Higgs, it has narrowed the search, reducing the window of possible masses where it might be found.

Last year, Fermi physicists said they expected to have enough data to find or rule out the Higgs by early next year, and gave themselves a fifty-fifty chance of finding it before the end of 2010.

[grey_whiskers]

If that happened, I'd like to be a fly on the wall when Carlo Rubbia found out.

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

(Sound of grey_whiskers purring.)

...yes, but would you hit it?

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

As Niels Bohr said, "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it."

For instance, something cannot be both a particle and not a particle ...

How much math have you had? A lot of the things in quantum mechanics are attempts to put into words, the implications of things which are purely mathematical. A lot of the "naked eye, reach out and touch with your hands" concepts don't apply at the quantum level, e.g. there is not an intrinsic property of objects called "color" (orange, puce, magenta, brown). The color is actually the result of how the object interacts with light. (And don't confuse this "color" with the "color" in Laz's chart earlier. Two different things.)

Cheers!

[dinoparty]

How do you know that the color is the result of the interactions you describe, instead of the interactions just being the byproducts of the color? In other words our common sense perceptions, properly understood, are the indespensable starting place for describing reality, not just some superficial facade that is nothing more than our feeble attempts to interpret a more fundemental reality “underneath” or “more real” than perception.

[grey_whiskers]

Quick answer is various optical effects such as rainbows, mirrors, etc.

A mirror maintains its original chemical composition and physical properties regardless of who's standing in front of it. But go to the clothing store and change outfits, and -- hey PRESTO! -- the mirror changes colors to reflect your new outfit.

(Sorry for the pun, it was inadvertent.)

For more details, go to Amazon.com and order a copy of Richard Feynman's QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Used copies from just over 2 bucks.

Cheers!