Higgs Boson Discovered?!

[Mudcat]

Farsight, I don't understand a lot of what's being said here. Far from it, in fact. But isn't a lot of you objections based upon the laws of physics as they apply in Newtonian space?

Those laws of physics aren't wrong, and as far as I can tell no one claims that they are wrong. They just don't necessarily apply in Quantum Mechanics, where those same laws start to breaking down due to the uncertainty principle.

So I don't see how your objections are relevant to the subject.

 

[Perpetual Student]

Just in case anyone is interested in actual physics, here is Higgs' 1964 paper which was the first to predict a massive boson as the result of the incorrectly named Higgs mechanism. Any objections that do not directly address this at a similar level of mathematics are simply irrelevant. No amount of wordy analogies and pointless handwaving can compete with an actual theory.

 

[Farsight]

So, you are admitting that you do not understand what a complex scalar field is? You do not understand what it means for a complex function to be symmetric under phase transformations? And -- you actually believe you are qualified to say anything about particle physics?

I'm not saying that. I'm saying you don't understand any of these things, and you cannot see that an explanation of something that refers to non-explained things is no explanation at all.

I have made it quite clear that my knowledge of physics is lacking -- but not so lacking for mathematics. There exists a term in the Lagrangian that is massless (along with one that has mass) which is the reason the breaking of symmetry generates massless particles. If you really do understand the physics involved here, you can tell us all why this is wrong.

I've been telling you, but you prefer not to listen. A Lagrangian is the system's kinetic energy less its potential energy. The standing wave in the box is all kinetic energy, but it adds mass to the system. From the outside that kinetic energy looks like potential energy.

So, you actually believe Higgs did not understand electromagnetism, the wave nature of matter, electron diffraction, etc.? WHAT HUBRIS!!!

Yes I do. Had he understood electromagnetism he would have understood the A-field and would not have introduced the Higgs field.

Why do you keep on muttering about the symmetry between inertia and momentum, photons are kinetic energy in space and other delusional baloney?

Because they aren't delusional baloney. What I've said is backed up by hard scientific evidence. And any more talk like that and you're on my ignore list. Let me reiterate what I said at 5:48...

OK, we're going to have new rules in this discussion hereon. Anybody who is abusive to me goes on my ignore list. If we get to the point where there's nobody left, the discussion is over.

Of course this applies to posts after 5:48pm today.

When you can explain what the spontaneous breaking of a continuous symmetry means and tell us why the explanation above is not correct we can proceed. In the meantime, buy yourself a pointed hat with crescent moons and stars painted on it and sell your ignorant rants elsewhere. No one here is buying your make-believe physics.

Speak for yourself. And you failed miserably at explaining that paper. Next.

 

[Perpetual Student]

OK, we're going to have new rules in this discussion hereon. Anybody who is abusive to me goes on my ignore list. If we get to the point where there's nobody left, the discussion is over.

Finally, we have a sensible statement from Farsight. Onto my ignore list you go.

 

[Farsight]

Einstein told us that matter has an equivalent energy content.

Einstein told us the mass is diminished when energy is emitted. And that the matter is diminished too. That's what E=mc² is all about. That's why it's on the T-shirts. That's why we have atom bombs.

Energy is a scalar quantity, like mass. Say you weigh 100 kg. Does that mean you are made of 100 kg? No, that is not a meaningful sentence. Nor is it a meaningful sentence to say you are made of 1m 96 cm. Your body temperature is about 37 degrees C but you are not made of 37 degrees C. And in exactly the same way, you are not made of a billion gigajoules.

Tubby, you are made of matter. And that matter is made of energy. You can destroy matter, but you can't destroy energy. And "the mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content". Those are Einstein's words. Look at them. A body actually contains energy. Energy is not just some abstract measure. Now go elsewhere and ask around on this. I am not wrong.

 

[Farsight]

There's no logic to it. You're making connections between things that don't have connections, and misunderstanding what needs explaining about the mass of certain fundamental particles...

Forget it then edd.

 

[edd]

Yes, direct coupling. QED doesn't model it, but it happens.

You do not have evidence contradicting QED.

Yes, photons have a wavelength.

Obviously. Read back however and you said all waves carry angular momentum. Justify this.

We're going round in circles edd.

Yes. I am jealous of all those photons, cos they don't.

 

[Farsight]

This is hilarious! Farsight does not understand what a complex scalar field is...

You can't explain that paper. It hasn't gone unnoticed.

 

[Farsight]

Nobody is saying Einstein was wrong (not on this anyway). You are erroneously claiming he would agree with you.

Tubby, does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content or not? It's that simple. If you say yes then I point out that the electron is a body. Then you have to agree with me that it's inertia depends upon its energy content. That means it doesn't depend on its interaction with the Higgs field. It boils down to is Einstein right, or Higgs? You can't have it both ways.

 

[Tubbythin]

No. They're waves travelling at c. Remember the inertia of a body depends upon its energy content. Photons have an energy content, but rest mass doesn't apply. You can't make a photon slow down by pushing against it.

I'm still not sure how any of this stops photons being a body. I suppose it all depends on definitions.

Light consists of waves. These have a quantum nature. The photon has a wavelength. It isn't a point-particle.

The same arguments apply to electrons/muons/tauons/neutrinos.

No, mass is a measure, you mean matter.

Do I???

Agreed.

Good.

No. It will take me too long to justify the definition I give. If you're really sincere about understanding it start a new thread, ask what energy is, and I'll explain it to you step by step.

I'm interested in understanding your definition of it. You seem to be invoking magical existence to it.

I understand it.

So why all this talk about photons ceasing to exist meaning they are made of kinetic energy?

No further comment.

Ok..?

It isn't meaningless. What ingredients went into the LHC to make the "Higgs boson"? Just protons and kinetic energy. Your just like, I dunno distance is a straw man argument.

Rest mass energy and kinetic energy went in and the same (combined) amount of rest mass energy and kinetic energy came out. That's the first law of thermodynamics.

I do. It's real. It's the one thing you can neither create nor destroy. You can make an electron move with it, or you can make an electron with it.

It's as real as momentum/mass/temperature etc...

 

[edd]

Forget it then edd.

I will not. I am not happy about the possibility of you misleading others, although it does not seem to be happening here.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Do try to address the points in this discussion. Your attempts to discredit me do not conceal your inability to respond adequately to the subject at hand.

I was responding to a point you introduced as if relevant to the subject at hand:

And yet he's revered like a gospel saint by people like you who have never read the original Einstein and don't understand the first thing about physics. Ye Gods.

If you base your argument upon who has and who hasn't read Einstein or understood the first thing about physics, then reminding you that you haven't been able to read Einstein and don't understand freshman-level physics is directly relevant to your argument.

OK, we're going to have new rules in this discussion hereon. Anybody who is abusive to me goes on my ignore list. If we get to the point where there's nobody left, the discussion is over.

Promises, promises.

If my posts have been insufficiently abusive to you, please let me know how I can improve.

 

[Farsight]

a) Because we know two-photon physics, we know extremely precisely that there is no light-light bound state. Go ahead, work it out. I'll wait. According to the laws of photon-photon interactions, write down the binding energy of a photon-photon bound state. There is no bound state.

But there's is photon-photon pair production, and there is annihilation, and electron diffraction, etc etc. What did you start with? Two photons. What did you end up with? Two photons? What did you have in between? Oh a fundamental particle! There is a bound state. But you don't recognise it because you weren't taught it.

In ordinary, nonrelativistic QM, there's is a standard (advanced) undergrad homework problem: find the ground state energy of an electron bound to a spherically-symmetric "square well" of finite depth. For shallow wells, there is no bound state. None. Zero. An electron can scatter off such a well, but never stick to it. Go ahead, learn QM and see for yourself. I'll wait.

The electron is the bound state. We talked about this some while back with Johan Prins.

Same with neutrinos. Neutrinos can scatter off one another---indeed, the weak force provides an attractive potential---but there's no neutrino-neutrino bound state.

Neutrinos interact only weakly.

I repeat: there is no light-light bound state. If you want to invent one, you're going to have to throw out the "two photon physics" you keep citing, because that physics tells you you're wrong.

That physics tells me I'm right. And when you try to say that pair production occurs because pair production occurs, it ought to tell you that you're wrong.

b) You have misunderstood the "arc" paper to an absolutely comical extent. There is no light-light scattering in this paper; it's just a cleverly-constructed set of ordinary, noninteracting waves.

This is light interacting with itself. I haven't misunderstood it at all.

My bold. There's no light-light scattering (a nonlinear and non-Maxwell's equation phenomenon) in this paper.

Light doesn't scatter off light, it interacts with it.

 

[Tubbythin]

Einstein told us the mass is diminished when energy is emitted. And that the matter is diminished too. That's what E=mc² is all about. That's why it's on the T-shirts. That's why we have atom bombs.

E=mc² is all about preserving the first law of thermodynamics.

Tubby, you are made of matter. And that matter is made of energy. You can destroy matter, but you can't destroy energy.

As I keep saying, E=mc² is all about preserving the first law of thermodynamics.

And "the mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content".

Right. That's the first law of thermodynamics.

Those are Einstein's words. Look at them. A body actually contains energy. Energy is not just some abstract measure. Now go elsewhere and ask around on this. I am not wrong.

Energy is the quantity that is conserved due to the temporal invariance of the laws of physics. Momentum is the quantity that is conserved due to the spatial invariance of the laws of physics. Einstein showed the correct conservation equations for both these quantities in all inertial reference frames. The idea that one is somehow the very essence of a body while the other is not is just... well... silly.

 

[Tubbythin]

Tubby, does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content or not? It's that simple.

If by inertia you mean "mass" then no. The energy "content" of a body depends on its mass.

 

[dafydd]

You know, I smile when our "moderators" permit trollish behaviour and abuse, then single me out with a penalty for answering back. It's no way to moderate a physics discussion. Instead since it's me giving the scientific evidence and the the well-supported explanation, it hands me the moral high ground and brings JREF into disrepute.

OK, we're going to have new rules in this discussion hereon. Anybody who is abusive to me goes on my ignore list. If we get to the point where there's nobody left, the discussion is over.

You are the soul of politeness.



''Wise up Tubby. When a church needs a miracle, a church gets a miracle.

I wouldn't want to provide anything other than a careful explanation, supported by robust evidence and papers, that people can actually understand.

I wouldn't want to provide anything other than a careful explanation, supported by robust evidence and papers, that people can actually understand.

Any objections? Speak now or forever hold your peace.

You bumped this thread, and now you can't take the heat, so go sling your hook. The big boys are talking physics.

I've given a coherent explanation, and you can't counter it. All you've ended up saying is that's what I was taught like some Sunday-school kid.

t might be an idea if you examined your adherence to what you were taught and your textbook bible and started thinking for yourself.

I give evidence galore and logic that even a child could understand,

And blow me Sherlock, that photon doesn't exist any more.

his is a forum for skeptics, for rational thinkers, not for suckers who lap up publicity releases and treat it like gospel.

And yet he's revered like a gospel saint by people like you who have never read the original Einstein and don't understand the first thing about physics. Ye Gods.

How many circular arguments do I have to point out to you before you start thinking for yourself?''



Ring any bells?

 

[ben m]

But there's is photon-photon pair production, and there is annihilation, and electron diffraction, etc etc. What did you start with? Two photons. What did you end up with? Two photons? What did you have in between? Oh a fundamental particle! There is a bound state. But you don't recognise it because you weren't taught it.

Nope. Take the laws of physics (QED) responsible for pair production, annihilation, diffraction, light-by-light scattering, etc.. Do the math that shows whether or not there's a bound state. There is not a bound state

The electron is the bound state. We talked about this some while back with Johan Prins.

Another thread where you insisted that this was true, everyone disagreed with you, and you didn't make any progress towards doing the physics.

Neutrinos interact only weakly.

Actually, neutrino-neutrino scattering would have a much, much larger cross-section than light-light scattering. Neutrino-neutrino scattering at ~1 eV would have a cross section of 10^-21 barns; photon-photon scattering at the same energy is something like 10^-43 barns. The fact that we've seen photon-photon scattering at all is due to the unusual experimental methods we can apply to this measurement which we can't reproduce with the neutrino beam.

This is light interacting with itself. I haven't misunderstood it at all.

You're not a very good judge of when you don't understand something.

 

[Tubbythin]

Farsight:
You go into a sweet shop with a dollar bill. The sweet shop sells (individually) three types of sweets - a mint sweet, a fruit sweet and a chocolate sweet.
How many mint sweets can you buy with your dollar?
How many fruit sweets can you buy with your dollar?
How many chocolate sweets can you buy with your dollar?

You can't answer any of those questions without knowing how much each costs. The number depends on the cost. The cost of each type of sweet is set by the shop owner. Let's call him Pete. Ok, Pete sets the costs of the sweets as:
mint - 1 cent
fruit - 2 cents
chocolate - 5 cents.

Now do the calculations above.

 

[smartcooky]

And yet he's revered like a gospel saint by people like you who have never read the original Einstein and don't understand the first thing about physics.

Well, so what? Most people have a poor appreciation of Shakespeare because they have not experienced reading him in the original Klingon!!!

 

[Farsight]

The 125 GeV/c² mass is a prediction from SUSY extensions to the Standard Model.

Pulled out of the hat long after the limits were closed down by null results. Go check it out.

Citation please to Einstein's explanation of mass. I do hope this is not E=mc² because that is not an explanation of mass. It is mass–energy equivalence.

It is E=mc², it's does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content? That's where Einstein said "The mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content". Not the measure of how that body interacts with some mysterious field. The measure of its energy content. Why do you have such an objection to that? You know about the wave nature of matter, and pair production, and atomic orbitals, and spherical harmonics, and electron diffraction, and magnetic moment and the Einstein-de Haas effect. And you can work out for yourself that a standing wave will resist change-in-motion just as a propagating wave will. You must surely understand that symmetry between momentum and inertia. Do you accept it? Can you elucidate why you reject it?

Citation please to Einstein's explanation of energy.

There isn't one. I can however explain it. See what I said to Tubby.

Farsight, what does relativistic mean?

Don't bother me with trivia, RC. It means relating to relativity or speeds which are a significant fraction of c. And relativity begain life as the principle of invariance. Things look the same in your box regardless of how fast you're moving. But when you look outside your box, they don't.

Sorry I've missed some of your posts. I'll go back to them when I've caught up.