• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Higgs Boson Discovered?!

Ok, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the thing that makes the Higgs so important simply that it's the only particle predicted by the SM that hadn't yet been found? And this discovery basically elevates SM to the same status as GR--a theory that's withstood every test we could throw at it?

I mean, it's nice to know that it has something to do with some form of mass, but that's not really why this is such a big discovery, is it? It's not the HB itself; it's the fact that it's the last piece of the puzzle. (At least within the domain the SM covers.)
 
xtifr said:
Ok, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the thing that makes the Higgs so important simply that it's the only particle predicted by the SM that hadn't yet been found?
Click to expand...

Sort of. Ultimately, it's not actually about a specific particle at all, but about symmetries. The standard model in it's basic form has certain symmetries which result in predictions that don't actually agree with observations. In order to get the theory to match things like the mass of certain particles, you need to add some way that the symmetry is broken. The Higgs mechanism adds an extra field (the theory is actually made up of fields, see here) into the SM which allows breaking of the symmetry in the correct way to get the masses for the W and Z gauge bosons that we actually observe.

So it's not just a question of there being a missing particle, this is essentially a test of the fundamental basis of the whole theory. Without the Higgs mechanism the entire standard model just makes no sense at all, so if we don't see the extra particle it also predicts the whole thing pretty much falls apart.

And this discovery basically elevates SM to the same status as GR--a theory that's withstood every test we could throw at it?
Click to expand...

Sadly not. Even with the Higgs, the standard model is known to be seriously flawed. The standard model doesn't even attempt to cover gravity, it can't explain dark matter, it fails badly at explaining dark energy, it fails at explaining the matter/antimatter imbalance, and so on. In fact, it's not even proven to be mathematically consistent. Relativity has some trouble at certain extreme scales, but the rest of the time it seems to be pretty much a perfect match to reality. The standard model just plain doesn't work. It's the best we can do so far, but we know it's not even close to complete.

I mean, it's nice to know that it has something to do with some form of mass, but that's not really why this is such a big discovery, is it? It's not the HB itself; it's the fact that it's the last piece of the puzzle. (At least within the domain the SM covers.)
Click to expand...

Discovering new fundamental particles is pretty big news that tends to result in Nobel prizes. The W and Z resulted in Nobel prizes, neutrinos resulted in Nobel prizes, the tao resulted in Nobel prizes, quarks resulted in Nobel prizes. In fact, the only ones that didn't are photons and electrons, since we already knew about them, and muons, where one of the discoverers had only just got a Nobel prize that year anyway. So yeah, discovering a new fundamental particle really is pretty important stuff just on its own.
 
Cuddles said:
The W and Z resulted in Nobel prizes, neutrinos resulted in Nobel prizes, the tao resulted in Nobel prizes, quarks resulted in Nobel prizes. In fact, the only ones that didn't are photons and electrons, since we already knew about them, and muons, where one of the discoverers had only just got a Nobel prize that year anyway. So yeah, discovering a new fundamental particle really is pretty important stuff just on its own.
Click to expand...

I don't think one was awarded for the discovery of the gluon.
 
Cuddles said:
Sadly not. Even with the Higgs, the standard model is known to be seriously flawed. The standard model doesn't even attempt to cover gravity, it can't explain dark matter, it fails badly at explaining dark energy, it fails at explaining the matter/antimatter imbalance, and so on.
Click to expand...
But GR doesn't explain any of those things either (with the possible exception of dark energy). It seems to me that all of those (with the possible exception of the matter/antimatter imbalance) are outside the domain of the standard model. And yes, we'll need a new model at some point to explain all that, but then we'll most likely need a quantum gravity model to supercede GR at some point as well, and GR may need some adjustments to deal with dark energy.

There's a difference, in my mind at least, between being incomplete and being incorrect. GR and the standard model both seem incomplete to me (the degree isn't so much of an issue--incomplete is incomplete), but both seem to be basically confirmed now within their domains.

In fact, it's not even proven to be mathematically consistent.
Click to expand...
Ah, well, that's more of an issue, I suppose. Of course, GR's more classical model, which actually makes it more dubious as a theory, is easier to achieve mathematical consistency with. It doesn't have anywhere near as many fiddly little arbitrary numbers that are hard to measure precisely. But GR still has problems with dividing by zero (singularities) and with increasing acceleration (Dark Energy).

But that's still a good point.
 
BobK said:
Stephen Wolfram has an interesting article at The Reference Frame giving his thoughts on the progression of particle physics and where he thinks it might be going.
Click to expand...

Yikes. Here's my reading of that article:

Shorter Wolfram said:
In my youth, I myself made modest contributions to the Standard Model, but I ultimately found the whole business somewhat beneath me. I'm glad that some people stuck with it, and I congratulate them on their old-fashioned and basically-non-visionary grunt work. In the meantime, my giant self-published manifesto, A New Kind Of Science, is clearly deeper and more important than any of this and may have already replaced all of science.
Click to expand...
 
An 'explanation' of mass said that there are Higgs Bosons everywhere, creating the Higgs field that creates mass. However, the Higgs Boson has an incredibly short life span, before it 'transmutates' into other particles.

How does that work?
 
a_unique_person said:
An 'explanation' of mass said that there are Higgs Bosons everywhere, creating the Higgs field that creates mass. However, the Higgs Boson has an incredibly short life span, before it 'transmutates' into other particles.

How does that work?
Click to expand...

I am a layman, but it's my understanding that it is the interactions with the Higgs field that give particles mass. A free Higgs boson can only come about by exciting the Higgs field with enough energy to produce one.
 
Turgor said:
I am a layman, but it's my understanding that it is the interactions with the Higgs field that give particles mass. A free Higgs boson can only come about by exciting the Higgs field with enough energy to produce one.
Click to expand...

Is it the field that creates the bosons? I thought that the particles, like the electron, created the field.

Is the Higgs field like some kind of aether?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom