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Higgs Boson Discovered?!

And second lay person question: Given all these particles and the amount of mass/space that they actually have/take up respectively, and say whatever is in between them is empty space (or space fabric if that's better), what would be the approximate % of 'stuff' vs empty expanding space? I'm trying to get a better handle on the singularity thing here.
 
The Higgs Boson walks into a church. The priest says: "We don't allow Higgs Bosons in here."

The Higgs Boson says: "But without me how can you have mass?"
 
Well I for one was blown away by the news although they said it was a bit premature and would have liked to have a had a couple of more weeks to prepare. Evidently CNN was not impressed. I turned on the news at noon to see what folks were saying and all they were talking about was some fungus in the Himalaya's that acts like viagra. They didn't even mention it.

So what I gathered is the discovery of a new boson is profound in and of itself because it gives substance to everything else but further research needs to be done to see how it fits the model that predicted it's existence? Right?

Well call it what you will, god, the "OM", or the universal french seam holding everything together, it is what it is.

What implications does this have for further research? What direction will they go in now?
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Sorry, lay person question here: Is the collision creating the boson or revealing the boson?
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It's reasonably safe to say "creating".

Skeptic Ginger said:
And second lay person question: Given all these particles and the amount of mass/space that they actually have/take up respectively, and say whatever is in between them is empty space (or space fabric if that's better), what would be the approximate % of 'stuff' vs empty expanding space? I'm trying to get a better handle on the singularity thing here.
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There's no reasonable sense in which bosons "have size" or "take up space". It's like looking at a radio antenna and asking whether there's space between the radio waves.
 
ben m said:
There's no reasonable sense in which bosons "have size" or "take up space". It's like looking at a radio antenna and asking whether there's space between the radio waves.
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Nitpick - mesons.
 
Belz... said:
What's this sigma business ?
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Standard deviation. It measures how confident they are that the result isn't just a random event.

CNN was interviewing a scientist today about it. The chick asked him, "Why should I care about this?" I think she meant it as a genuine question hoping he would tell her how it would impact her life. But since it's not that kind of discovery, he had a tough time answering. It came out something like "If you want to know a little more about how the Universe came to be, then you should care."
 
Belz... said:
What's this sigma business ?
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As someone said, sigma is synonymous with standard deviation. In this context, a signal generated by a particle passing through one of the LHC detectors isn't usually considered even to be an "observation" unless it hits the three sigma mark (i.e. three standard deviations off from the background). Specifically, a signal of three sigma would have about a 0.3% chance of being a fluke signal.

However, given the number of collisions that take place and other factors, the bar is set ever higher for a signal to be considered a genuine "discovery"; that bar is set at 5 sigma, or 5 standard deviations. That would mean that if you had a 5 sigma signal, such as the ones associated with this latest announcement, then the chances of it being a fluke are about 1 in 1,744,278.

Bottom line: the higher the sigma value of your signal, the more rare and (if repeatable) the more likely it is to be the real McCoy.

ETA: I goofed my explanation a bit. See edd's correction below.
 
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I keep banging on about it, but I do so because I think this is important. It does not tell you the chance that it's a fluke. It tells you the chance that if the effect didn't exist (in this case if the Higgs did not exist) you would get such a fluke. The two are not the same thing.

To get that value you have to assume it's a fluke so it clearly can't tell you the probability that it's a fluke - although it is useful information in determining that.
 
Jodie said:
Well I for one was blown away by the news although they said it was a bit premature and would have liked to have a had a couple of more weeks to prepare. Evidently CNN was not impressed. I turned on the news at noon to see what folks were saying and all they were talking about was some fungus in the Himalaya's that acts like viagra. They didn't even mention it.

So what I gathered is the discovery of a new boson is profound in and of itself because it gives substance to everything else but further research needs to be done to see how it fits the model that predicted it's existence? Right?
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Jodie, check out this link for a quick idea of what the Higgs field and Higgs boson are all about: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/video/2012/jul/03/what-is-a-higgs-boson-video

Well call it what you will, god, the "OM", or the universal french seam holding everything together, it is what it is.
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Yes, one has to wonder what the next thing in physics will be that will attract the "god" label.

What implications does this have for further research? What direction will they go in now?
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Well, that's one of the things they need to figure out, after all the t's are crossed and i's dotted regarding this current work. Personally, I have thought of a number of things already:

1. Why is it that photons do not interact with the Higgs field? That is, what is the mechanism which causes other particles to interact with the Higgs, thus creating mass, whereas photons lack this mechanism?

2. How does gravity fit into the Higgs? If the Higgs is responsible for giving particles mass, and gravitational forces act upon mass, is there some kind of tie in or connection between the Higgs field and gravity fields? (I'm particularly interested in this one)

3. What about dark energy? The Higgs field apparently penetrates all of the universe, because we observe all particles in the universe, no matter their location, to have mass (say, via gravitational interaction). And apparently dark energy, whatever it is, also permeates all of the universe; is there a connection between the two?

4. Can the discovery of the Higgs help in the search for dark matter particles? Since we know dark matter interacts gravitationally, then it must have mass, and if it must have mass there should be some kind of relationship to the Higgs field.

I'm pretty certain there are plenty of other questions, too. Those are just the ones off the top of my head.
 
edd said:
I keep banging on about it, but I do so because I think this is important. It does not tell you the chance that it's a fluke. It tells you the chance that if the effect didn't exist (in this case if the Higgs did not exist) you would get such a fluke. The two are not the same thing.

To get that value you have to assume it's a fluke so it clearly can't tell you the probability that it's a fluke - although it is useful information in determining that.
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Ah yes, my mistake. Thank you for the clarification, edd :)
 
Btw, I have watched the press conference from CERN, but it was preceded by a more technical seminar, apparently. Does anyone know where I can access a recording of that seminar?
 
edd said:
I keep banging on about it, but I do so because I think this is important. It does not tell you the chance that it's a fluke. It tells you the chance that if the effect didn't exist (in this case if the Higgs did not exist) you would get such a fluke. The two are not the same thing.

To get that value you have to assume it's a fluke so it clearly can't tell you the probability that it's a fluke - although it is useful information in determining that.
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Great explanation. Thanks!
 
MattusMaximus said:
However, given the number of collisions that take place and other factors, the bar is set ever higher for a signal to be considered a genuine "discovery"; that bar is set at 5 sigma, or 5 standard deviations. That would mean that if you had a 5 sigma signal, such as the ones associated with this latest announcement, then the chances of it being a fluke are about 1 in 1,744,278.
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I'm not sure about this bit either. Surely the size and nature of the background goes in to determining the standard deviation.
I've always thought the bar is set at 5 sigma because they don't want to be shown to be wrong at a later date.

Incidentally its worth noting that experimenters at LEP saw an indication of a signal for the Higgs at 115 GeV but not at the anything like the 5 sigma level (anyone know exactly what it was?). And then LEP was turned off to make way for the LHC. Subsequently that seems to have turned out to be a statistical anomaly. So this stringent 5 sigma requirement has proved, err, significant.
 
edd said:
I keep banging on about it, but I do so because I think this is important. It does not tell you the chance that it's a fluke. It tells you the chance that if the effect didn't exist (in this case if the Higgs did not exist) you would get such a fluke. The two are not the same thing.

To get that value you have to assume it's a fluke so it clearly can't tell you the probability that it's a fluke - although it is useful information in determining that.
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In my digging around the CERN website looking at the slides of the technical presentation, I found this one which seems to be displaying exactly the point that edd was making above...



Caption:
The probability of background to produce a signal-like excess, for all the Higgs boson masses tested. At almost all masses, the probability (solid curve) is at least a few percent; however, at 126.5 GeV it dips to 3x10-7, or one chance in three million, the '5-sigma' gold-standard normally used for the discovery of a new particle. A Standard Model Higgs boson with that mass would produce a dip to 4.6 sigma.
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Edd, or anyone else, am I interpreting that graph correctly given the context of our conversation?
 
When we see how fast alternative medicine will incorporate this new discovery maybe it's time to reevaluate our skepticism?

Just a thought.
 
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