Higgs boson found?

[bascule]

http://www.slate.com/id/2167563/nav/tap3/

 

Apparently there's a "rumor" going around that the Tevatron found the Higgs Boson

[foodchain]

I don’t understand. If the standard model requires this particle to exist for the universe to work, is it only on some particular scale that such is required, or is it required for day to day activities of nature regardless of scale.

[CPL.Luke]

it would still be requiredin the day to day, its just that you an use alot of lovely approxiations to cover for it, for instance when you are working out the trajectoriesof two rubber balls that collided, do you really need to know what was happening at the atomic scale to find your answer.

[foodchain]

it would still be requiredin the day to day, its just that you an use alot of lovely approxiations to cover for it, for instance when you are working out the trajectoriesof two rubber balls that collided, do you really need to know what was happening at the atomic scale to find your answer.

 

Well, on that level(atomic) I would say yes.

 

My reason for asking really is I don’t fully understand the standard model, now I know on this website such a tag might back me something of a heathen but you will have to pardon my ignorance.

 

I mean lets say organic evolution right? Well, evolution for what its worth I seriously doubt to just apply to life. So how far back does such a word or process really apply? Its just a question that’s been bubbling around my brain is all. I have heard about the Higgs boson before, but I still don’t fully understand close to much anything about it. The question to me simply is just that. I mean if you removed say electrons from the universe, what would be left? So is the Higgs boson equal to say the electron in requirement for natural phenomena(as it is) to occur, exist and so on, and on what scale, down to two rubber balls bouncing, to I guess say a super nova. I don’t understand where the Higgs boson falls into the equation I guess. Also, if such was so common, then why is it so drastically difficult to detect?

 

One last chunk is say the artificial elements people have created. It just shows that nothing is set in stone so to speak. With that being said, the relation of mass and energy, or matter and energy, it derives me back to thinking about the application of evolution to things other then life is all, for me to understand where the Higgs boson comes into play is important in ways I currently probably cannot really envision, I do tend to waste my free time on this stuff is all. Lastly, in a perfectly controlled experiment, what if you can get something to come into existence, but only for a few thousandths of a second, was it a particle, was it a wave, or was it some abomination that simply cannot occur in our environment with any stability? I guess I also don’t understand how they declare something really.

[immortal]

The latest analysis done by the scientists at Tevatron shows that the mass of top quark is heavier than previously measured. This would mean that the mass of Higgs boson has also got heaviour from 96 to 117 GeV/c2 . So it is very likely that they would have found the Higgs boson. There is also a lot of possibility that what they have found may be a fake Higgs boson.

[swansont]

There is also a lot of possibility that what they have found may be a fake Higgs boson.

 

Excuse me? Could you clarify what you meant by this?

[immortal]

 

 

 

I mean lets say organic evolution right? Well, evolution for what its worth I seriously doubt to just apply to life. So how far back does such a word or process really apply? Its just a question that’s been bubbling around my brain is all. I have heard about the Higgs boson before, but I still don’t fully understand close to much anything about it. The question to me simply is just that. I mean if you removed say electrons from the universe, what would be left? So is the Higgs boson equal to say the electron in requirement for natural phenomena(as it is) to occur, exist and so on, and on what scale, down to two rubber balls bouncing, to I guess say a super nova. I don’t understand where the Higgs boson falls into the equation I guess. Also, if such was so common, then why is it so drastically difficult to detect?

 

 

Evolution can be applied starting from the moment of origin (when space and time itself expanded). Yes evolution not only applies to life it also applies to other things. Evolution is all about randomness and it can be seen in life as well as in matter and as you can't perfectly say that a particular gene gets mutated you can't be 100% sure that a particle will decay into another one there is lot of uncertainity and randomness.

 

Even I don't know much about the Higgs boson and this is what I know it is very essential to understand the nature. According to theory the elementary particles should have zero mass like photon but experiments show that particles are too heavy and has mass. The particles interact with the Higgs field and acquire mass and Higgs field is carried by Higgs boson.

The particles exists for a thousandth of a second before it decays so you need lot of energy to collide a huge number of sub-atomic particles at the speeds approaching c and chanes of finding the particle is very less.

[Sayonara]

Evolution is all about randomness

It really isn't.

 

Chance has its role, particularly where mutations have a bearing, but evolution is far from random.

[immortal]

Excuse me? Could you clarify what you meant by this?

According to the theory when an electron collides with a proton the resulting energy will be converted into matter in the form of Higgs boson and Z particles as the z particle is formed usually in the accelerators and both decay into bottom quarks. SO what they would have detected may be a Z particle which will decay into a bottom quark.

[insane_alien]

but we know what a Z particle is and what it would look like on the data.

 

i'm going to go ahead and reach out on a limb to say that the particle physicists know a Z particle from something new.

[Severian]

I am actually sitting in CERN at the moment (I was down the ATLAS pit just this afternoon) and there is certainly no-one talking about this rumour here.

 

The rumour from John Conway a few months ago just seems to have been all hot air (and I believe John had his fingers rapped by the management for it), and I imagine this is the same story.

 

The problem is that the Tevatron just doesn't have the luminosity to see such a heavy Higgs boson, and won't have for some time. So if it were real, it would almost certainly NOT be the Higgs boson of the Standard Model (or the supersymmetric version) because the rate must be too high. If the bump were at about 115GeV then maybe, but not 180GeV. (The Higgs boson gets harder to create the heavier it gets.)

 

As for immortal's idea of a Z boson, this won't wash because the Z boson mass is about 91.2GeV, so the resonance bump would be much lower. It could possibly be a Z', ie the gauge boson of an as yet unknown new force, but then one would have to think of some reason why it wouldn't show up in precision tests (which rule out Z's up to about 800GeV if I remember correctly).

 

I suspect the bump will mysteriously go away with more data.

 

Edit: Also, the latest top mass measurement is lower than previously. the latest number is 172.5 +/- 2.3 GeV.

[Klaynos]

foodchain, the standard model, is a model of fundemental particles and what they can form, IIRC it describes the EM, weak and strong forces and their intereactions. If the higgs boson is found it is more evidence for it, if the higgs is not found when it is exptected to be found then that implies there is something wrong with the model or experiment. If it is found to be the model will this effect your day to day life, no, will it effect other theories, possibly slightly, but it wont change newtonian mechanics which is what most people deal with every day.

 

I also think that Severian has a good point here with the previous rumour and saying that there's a good chance it'll just disappear... And it's certainly interesting that noone at Cern is talking about it...

 

Foodchain I'd also hope that someone who admits lack of knowledge and is willing to learn is never branded anything bad here.

[GammaMambo]

It is a really nice daydream though to imagine the confirmation of this.

It would open up a totally new world for us.

[swansont]

It is a really nice daydream though to imagine the confirmation of this.

It would open up a totally new world for us.

 

 

Well, the point of the article was that it wouldn't; the totally new world would be finding some physics beyond the standard model.

[GammaMambo]

a girl can dream. I am really interested in knowing more about it.

Some discussions say it will change they way we look at theories.

[immortal]

It really isn't.

 

Chance has its role, particularly where mutations have a bearing, but evolution is far from random.

 

Yes I was wrong Evolution is all about random mutation followed by a non random selection. I just looked at the mutation part but forgot to see what happens after that. I don't think that there is lot of difference between random and chance. Random implies lack of particular pattern or without any purpose where as Chance is by accident or lack of arrangement in advance. Its not decided in advance that humans will evolve during this time. It just happens. I think both words will apply to evolution. You can not have life without Evolution but you can have Evolution without life.