Cern's LHC facility announced today a 5-sigma confidence in their having discovered the Higgs boson.
Given that, they ferried the 83 year-old Higgs across the sea to Switzerland for the announcement. They must be pretty confident.
They're still niggling over whether it's the "classic" Higgs, or a more exotic form, but are sure it is a Higgs.
Physicists now have another toy!
LLoyd
Is that a type of ship that was sunk at sea?
Maybe this?
Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus
Given that, they ferried the 83 year-old Higgs across the sea to Switzerland for the announcement. They must be pretty confident.
They're still niggling over whether it's the "classic" Higgs, or a more exotic form, but are sure it is a Higgs.
Physicists now have another toy!
LLoyd
"Stormin Mormon" fired this volley in news:1_2Jr.45207$ snipped-for-privacy@news.usenetserver.com:
The Higgs boson. "Discovered" in mathematics in 1964 by himself and two other independent theoretical physicists.
It took until now to verify its existance. It makes a big difference in how physicists will approach describing physical substances in the future.
It's supposed to be the fundamental particle that gives all other larger particles mass.
It also rapidly decays into smaller particles What are THEY???
"Scale" may not have a limit in either direction.
LLoyd
Crikey, I sure hope a gate doesn't open up in my back yard tomorrow. I'm calling Mimi and Tuffy to see if they can come over, just in case.
-- Truth loves to go naked. --Dr. Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732
And Two-gun for backup!
We have had the toy for years, just trying to get our hands around it to measure and test.
They detected the particle as it was decayed out of another particle.
The other particle changed it's characteristics.
Kinda really cool. Been a long haul since the first quark but as Higgs said himself - he was really pleased that it was found during his lifetime. Think of Einstein - many of his have been proved in the past 20 years.
Mart> Cern's LHC facility announced today a 5-sigma confidence in their having
Martin Eastburn fired this volley in news:PP6Jr.130617$ snipped-for-privacy@en-nntp-11.dc.easynews.com:
Yeahbut... (my life is dedicated to the "yeah, but!")...
There were (at least) two divergent schools of theoretical physics: one which accepted the boson, and another that did not. They came up with entirely different rationalizations of where mass and gravity came from.
Now, there would appear to be only one school that's viable. That, alone, is a wonderful 'correction'.
Knowing first hand how scientists are, I believe the non-boson-school physicists will all have to die of old age before their rejection of it is over, but at least the pro-boson camp has something in its pocket to call a compass, where before it was only a "treasure map".
LLoyd
Actually it won't. It's part of the standard model. Change would have come about if it had not been discovered.
All other particles mass (with a few exceptions). Not all other larger particles. The Higgs is huge, there are few larger particles. And it's actually the Higgs field, of which the Higgs Boson is a manifestation, that is responsible for mass.
Mostly quarks and antiquarks.
has more detail if you're interested.
If it doesn't at the small end then quantum theory is wrong. Since the Higgs is predicted by quantum theory, the discovery of it is another confirmation of quantum theory and thus does nothing to suggest that the Planck scale is wrong.
The Standard Model has the Higgs. There are numerous alternative models that either do not have it or have a different version of it from the Higgs. The schools aren't "divergent", they just make different assumptions. Now it turns out that there is a particle at approximately the predicted mass. Next question, is it the Higgs or something else (that has to be determined) and if it's the Higgs then is it the Higgs of the Standard model or of one of the alternative models?
Well, it means that there's no point in chasing the alternative models anymore.
Few of the "non boson school" as you call it are opposed to the idea. It's more of an intellectual exercise.
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