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| The Higgs Boson | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 4 2012, 04:54 AM (750 Views) | |
| Axtremus | Jul 4 2012, 04:54 AM Post #1 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Articles: http://www.nature.com/news/physicists-find-new-particle-but-is-it-the-higgs-1.10932 http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-04/cern-removes-video-saying-physicists-found-higgs-like-particle http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9228785/CERN_finds_particle_that_resembles_long_sought_Higgs_boson?taxonomyId=67 Video: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/large-hadron-collider/9374788/Higgs-Boson-announcement-from-Cern-LIVE.html |
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| Horace | Jul 4 2012, 07:16 AM Post #2 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Cool! But is there any practical importance to this? Based on what I just read, the assumption of its existence has been baked into the "standard model" forever. I guess they observed that the "standard model" predicts reality accurately and assumed therefore that there must be something like this particle there, but weren't able to find it. But the "proof" of its existence even before this discovery was that the math worked in practice. So this just gives us direct proof of something we already had lots of indirect evidence of, and it changes nothing really. |
| As a good person, I implore you to do as I, a good person, do. Be good. Do NOT be bad. If you see bad, end bad. End it in yourself, and end it in others. By any means necessary, the good must conquer the bad. Good people know this. Do you know this? Are you good? | |
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| kenny | Jul 4 2012, 08:18 AM Post #3 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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I ain't not educated not none but I also wonder about this all. I think there is some unfortunate arrogance and ego at work up in the stratosphere of academia and science. Spending so much money on this didn't cure cancer or bring clean drinking water or sewage treatment plants to millions of our poorest humans. What use is all this kind of high science? ... and can that usefulness ever justify the cost when there are so many other humane and pressing needs for the money? |
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| Copper | Jul 4 2012, 08:37 AM Post #4 |
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Shortstop
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Don't worry your pretty little head about it, it will. |
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The Confederate soldier was peculiar in that he was ever ready to fight, but never ready to submit to the routine duty and discipline of the camp or the march. The soldiers were determined to be soldiers after their own notions, and do their duty, for the love of it, as they thought best. Carlton McCarthy | |
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| AndyD | Jul 4 2012, 10:21 AM Post #5 |
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Senior Carp
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I heard it being compared to finding the electron in 1897. We now have electronics and all that is connected. |
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Every morning the soul is once again as good as new, and again one offers it to one's brothers & sisters in life. | |
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| Mikhailoh | Jul 4 2012, 10:45 AM Post #6 |
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
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We have yet to really imagine where this might lead. |
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Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball | |
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| George K | Jul 4 2012, 02:49 PM Post #7 |
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Finally
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An explanation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFGpNMe5eEQ |
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A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
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| George K | Jul 4 2012, 05:06 PM Post #8 |
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Finally
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Hawking speaks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmzwuYj5w1U "It seems I have just lost $100." |
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A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
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| Mikhailoh | Jul 4 2012, 05:20 PM Post #9 |
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
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This is not big, this is HUGE. We may not see the result in our lifetime. but I expect more knowlege to cascade from this. |
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Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball | |
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| George K | Jul 4 2012, 05:21 PM Post #10 |
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Finally
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Discovery Brings Scientists Close to Understanding Mass Sub-headline: "Catholics around world celebrate."
Yep, this is a big big deal. There will be Nobel Prizes for this (hopefully, the top-shelf, really deserved kind, thank you very much).
Edited by George K, Jul 4 2012, 05:22 PM.
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A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
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| Mikhailoh | Jul 4 2012, 05:22 PM Post #11 |
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
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A fine mouthful of burgundy you owe me. We will assess the technical damage tomorrow when we see if this stuff still works. |
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Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball | |
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| Copper | Jul 4 2012, 05:40 PM Post #12 |
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Shortstop
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"for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples". Sorry, I just had to post it again, I couldn't stop myself. |
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The Confederate soldier was peculiar in that he was ever ready to fight, but never ready to submit to the routine duty and discipline of the camp or the march. The soldiers were determined to be soldiers after their own notions, and do their duty, for the love of it, as they thought best. Carlton McCarthy | |
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| Horace | Jul 4 2012, 05:44 PM Post #13 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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I agree that it's a big deal and that it's important (just listen to all the physicists on the news today, those are the words you'll hear repeated as if to assert something that can't really be demonstrated but only stated). It's a big, important thing in an academic sense, and yes, it will probably lead to a Nobel. But building a better microscope (so to speak) to see things we couldn't see before, only to affirm the existence of something that we'd always assumed and had always proceeded based on that assumption, does not smell to me like something of huge practical significance. I'm not unhappy they're doing this stuff, good for them for finding it and all that. But if this brings us closer to something useful or cool, all the media stories (which should key in on just that) are suspiciously devoid of anything along those lines. |
| As a good person, I implore you to do as I, a good person, do. Be good. Do NOT be bad. If you see bad, end bad. End it in yourself, and end it in others. By any means necessary, the good must conquer the bad. Good people know this. Do you know this? Are you good? | |
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| Copper | Jul 4 2012, 05:54 PM Post #14 |
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Shortstop
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It might help to imagine that this seems to be considered a significant step toward understanding everything. Everything includes everything useful and cool. |
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The Confederate soldier was peculiar in that he was ever ready to fight, but never ready to submit to the routine duty and discipline of the camp or the march. The soldiers were determined to be soldiers after their own notions, and do their duty, for the love of it, as they thought best. Carlton McCarthy | |
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| Axtremus | Jul 4 2012, 06:15 PM Post #15 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Horace, the significance of this is that we now know we don't have to scrap the Standard Model. |
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| Horace | Jul 4 2012, 06:21 PM Post #16 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Right which means we'll be proceeding down the same path we've been proceeding down. This adds no new practical information. It just affirms an assumption that had always been made. Stephen Hawking bet against finding it because, according to that interview GK posted, he thinks that the most important advances in physics come from experimental evidence which don't jibe with the predictions of theory. He was wishfully betting, hoping this thing that the standard theories assumed, didn't in fact exist. That may have been a more interesting scientific advance than affirming the theories that have existed and that have been used for practical purposes for a very long time. |
| As a good person, I implore you to do as I, a good person, do. Be good. Do NOT be bad. If you see bad, end bad. End it in yourself, and end it in others. By any means necessary, the good must conquer the bad. Good people know this. Do you know this? Are you good? | |
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| Copper | Jul 4 2012, 06:28 PM Post #17 |
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Shortstop
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I think there are probably many people on many paths. This event is by definition new practical information, isn't it? |
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The Confederate soldier was peculiar in that he was ever ready to fight, but never ready to submit to the routine duty and discipline of the camp or the march. The soldiers were determined to be soldiers after their own notions, and do their duty, for the love of it, as they thought best. Carlton McCarthy | |
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| Luke's Dad | Jul 4 2012, 06:41 PM Post #18 |
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Emperor Pengin
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Think of it this way, Horace, the things they learned in building the microscope to see to that level will have huge immediate repercussions in certain industries. You may not see the results directly tied immediately to it, but they will be there. |
| The problem with having an open mind is that people keep trying to put things in it. | |
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| Horace | Jul 4 2012, 07:43 PM Post #19 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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It's possible that the LHC technology will pay dividends. That doesn't really have anything to do with this particular discovery though.
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| As a good person, I implore you to do as I, a good person, do. Be good. Do NOT be bad. If you see bad, end bad. End it in yourself, and end it in others. By any means necessary, the good must conquer the bad. Good people know this. Do you know this? Are you good? | |
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| George K | Jul 6 2012, 08:29 PM Post #20 |
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Finally
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So a Higgs Boson walks into a church. The priest says, "Hey! No Higgs Bosons are allowed in here!" The Higgs Boson says, "Yah? Without me, how can you have mass?"
Edited by George K, Jul 6 2012, 08:39 PM.
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A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
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| Mikhailoh | Jul 6 2012, 08:43 PM Post #21 |
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
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Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball | |
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| Horace | Jul 6 2012, 09:35 PM Post #22 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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[buzzkill] See that's my point, both those jokes would have worked perfectly before this discovery because all that the Higgs boson was assumed to be turns out to be true (more or less; I guess they're still not completely sure that this thing's characteristics are completely consistent with the Higgs boson, but they have no evidence to the contrary). Here's how it all worked as far as I can gather from an ignorant bird's eye view: there was a theory that was concocted more or less as a black box at some point, by the magic of some human mind(s) that were able to intuit some stuff that happened to be accurate even if not every detail had yet been worked out. That intuition / deduction / inspiration / what have you, even if not completely detailed and explained, was specific enough to be formalized mathematically, and that math was tested against reality and was found to model reality accurately. Win. But nobody ever claimed to understand the specifics of why the math worked down to the very last detail. So the equations were dug into, and what we could observe was mapped to parts of that math, and the parts left over were left unexplained. Thus the Higgs boson was born, an unexplained piece of a math equation that was found to map to reality accurately. 60 years ago someone said "there must be something like this there, or the math wouldn't work right". Now we see there's something like that there. Not a compelling case for a practical scientific advance IMO. (But definitely a compelling case for the power of logic and math to figure the world out.) [buzzkill] (I would prepend a / to that last buzzkill but who am I kidding?) |
| As a good person, I implore you to do as I, a good person, do. Be good. Do NOT be bad. If you see bad, end bad. End it in yourself, and end it in others. By any means necessary, the good must conquer the bad. Good people know this. Do you know this? Are you good? | |
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| Copper | Jul 7 2012, 08:39 AM Post #23 |
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Shortstop
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Yes, another one of those boring I told you so stories. Kind of like circumnavigating the earth. |
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The Confederate soldier was peculiar in that he was ever ready to fight, but never ready to submit to the routine duty and discipline of the camp or the march. The soldiers were determined to be soldiers after their own notions, and do their duty, for the love of it, as they thought best. Carlton McCarthy | |
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| Axtremus | Jul 7 2012, 09:16 AM Post #24 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Indeed, it's "basic research," not "applied/practical science." |
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| QuantumIvory | Jul 7 2012, 09:16 AM Post #25 |
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Senior Carp
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Still confused about the Higgs Boson? Read this. Still not making sense? |
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"I regard consciousness as fundamental. We cannot get behind consciousness." -Max Planck | |
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It's possible that the LHC technology will pay dividends. That doesn't really have anything to do with this particular discovery though.
12:17 AM Jul 11