Higgs Boson Discovered?!

[W.D.Clinger]

Clinger: I made it clear that the "fields" referred to are E and B, which aren't actually fields, but instead denote the linear and rotational forces resulting from electromagnetic field interactions. Pay attention to Minkowski:

Farsight: I am fully aware that decompositions of the electromagnetic fields into the E and B fields are relativistic, just as decompositions of spacetime into space and time dimensions are relativistic.

In other contexts, you have claimed that gravitational fields are real, even though gravitational fields are observer-dependent. (That's Einstein's equivalence principle, BTW, which you have taken such great pains to deny.) The E and B fields are observer-dependent also, but they're just as real as gravitational fields.

You understand neither electromagnetism nor relativity. If you did understand those things, you'd know what a field is, and you'd know that E and B are fields...trivially...by the very definition of the word field.

I provided that link in my post above. You must not have read the Wikipedia article on fields in physics, because you're still making the same absurd claim.

 

[Pixel42]

Back on topic:

Cosmos may be 'inherently unstable'

Scientists say they may be able to determine the eventual fate of the cosmos as they probe the properties of the Higgs boson.

A concept known as vacuum instability could result, billions of years from now, in a new universe opening up in the present one and replacing it.

It all depends on some precise numbers related to the Higgs that researchers are currently trying to pin down. [...]

Since detecting the particle in their accelerator experiments, researchers at the Geneva lab and at related institutions around the world have begun to theorise on the Higgs' implications for physics.

One idea that it throws up is the possibility of a cyclical universe, in which every so often all of space is renewed.

"It turns out there's a calculation you can do in our Standard Model of particle physics, once you know the mass of the Higgs boson," explained Dr Joseph Lykken.

"If you use all the physics we know now, and you do this straightforward calculation - it's bad news.

"What happens is you get just a quantum fluctuation that makes a tiny bubble of the vacuum the Universe really wants to be in. And because it's a lower-energy state, this bubble will then expand, basically at the speed of light, and sweep everything before it," the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory theoretician told BBC News.

Fascinating stuff.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

I'll have to look into that instability. As it's explained in the article, it doesn't make sense, unless the low-energy state that is created is such that a closed spacetime can eventually form within it.

 

[edd]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3022 seems to be the original theoretical paper?

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Could be. Given the abstract, there are no cosmological implications there, of course. I think I'm too busy this week to slog through that paper.

 

[lpetrich]

[1112.3022] Higgs mass implications on the stability of the electroweak vacuum - edd's link with the article title in it.

That paper *assumes* no supersymmetry or other effects which might stabilize the Higgs particle -- it only uses the bare Standard Model.


Now for Higgs-particle mass estimates. RÉSONAANCES: Twin Peaks in ATLAS gives these values:

Source | Mass
ATLAS ZZ | 123.5 +- 1.1 GeV
ATLAS γγ | 126.6 +- 1.1 GeV
CMS ZZ -> 4l | 126.2 +- 0.6 GeV
CMS γγ | 125.1 +- 0.7 GeV

(the ATLAS stdevs I measured off of the graphs)

Jester, who blogged this, linked to some ATLAS sources, but used some CMS results based on 2011 data.

These results will likely get updated in time for the next high-energy-physics conferences this year.

I've burrowed through these sites to find their most recent estimates without much success:
ATLAS Experiment
CMS Public | CMS Experiment


So that paper's Higgs-mass estimates include the most recent experimental results.

 

[Mister Earl]

Is this new information about an inherently unstable universe referring to a Quantum Metastability Event?

My favorite "doomsday" scenario.

 

[Farsight]

Don't make me laugh. I *studied* general relativity, an I know for a fact that GR gravitiational waves are transverse. That's what you get when you solve the equations.

Sorry, my mistake, I should have said aren't the same rather than aren't. They're said to be quadrupole waves where there's a squeeze and stretch. This article gets it across fairly well: "Gravitational waves are transverse waves but they are not dipole transverse waves like most electromagnetic waves, they are quadrupole waves".

A lot of units factors. Thumping that would make a scriptural percussionist proud. The local speed of light in a vacuum is officially defined as a constant. In fact, in theoretical work, it's often set equal to 1.

The locally measured speed of light in vacuum is always 299,792,458 m/s but we know that the second varies with gravitational potential, and that the coordinate speed of light varies in a non-inertial reference frame such as a gravitational field. So we understand that "a curvature of rays of light can only take place when the velocity of propagation of light varies with position. Don't we?

I don't deny either effect for a moment.

But you did evade giving a response to my references to the Einstein-de Haas effect and magnetic dipole moment. These provide hard scientific evidence that electron spin involves something going round. As ever you dismiss Einstein etc and evidence when it's inconvenient truth.

 

[ben m]

But you did evade giving a response to my references to the Einstein-de Haas effect and magnetic dipole moment. These provide hard scientific evidence that electron spin involves something going round. As ever you dismiss Einstein etc and evidence when it's inconvenient truth.

You didn't provide evidence, or argument, or anything. You did a Farsight-standard "look, read this, and you'll come to the same conclusion I did."

Nope.

The Einstein-de Haas experiment proves that intrinsic angular momentum is a type of angular momentum, and goes into the same conservation law. In the real world, Dirac (among others) was able to describe this momentum without assuming anything "going round", and that's perfectly consistent with all known facts about these particles.

Your mental picture already contained "something going round", and you read about de Haas and thought it agreed with your picture. That's all the argumentation you have here, and indeed it's fairly typical of you.

If "something going round" is so important, why can't you find an error (or a failred prediction) in Dirac's treatment?

 

[Farsight]

Protons are not observed to decay so there you are.

Which means those theories that predict it are wrong. Have a google on that.

Back to your high school sceince textbooks, Farsight.
E is an electric field.
B is a magnetic field.
They are components of an electromagnetic field.

No! There’s an online copy of John David Jackson’s Classical Electrodynamics here. Use the read online-option and put double quotes around a phrase to search for it. See section 1.2 where he says Although the thing that eventually gets measured is a force and At the moment the electric field can be defined as the force per unit charge acting at a given point. Then see see section 11.10 where he says one should properly speak of the electromagnetic field Fuv rather than E or B separately. The field concerned is the electromagnetic field. E and B aren't really fields, they're just ciphers for linear and rotational forces resulting from electromagnetic field interactions.

Wow - what astounding ignorance, Farsight !
An electron is a fundamental particle. There is nothing inside it to come apart!

Enough.

 

[Farsight]

The proton is a composite particle containing three quarks, and we know what holds these quarks together. The quarks are fundamental. No known theory or experiment requires any substructure "held together" inside a quark. Electrons are also fundamental. No known theory or experiment requires any substructure "held together" inside an electron. That answers the question as far as I'm concerned, until someone points out a problem in these details, which you have (still) not done.

One problem is that in proton-antiproton annihilation we never see quarks. Another is that the lack of electron substructure does not account for the Einstein-de Haas effect or magnetic dipole moment. Another problem is that we can create so-called fundamental" particles via say pair production, but what you call "known theory" does not explain the mechanism involved. The overriding problem is that people like you are essentially fundamentalists.

 

[Farsight]

Problems with the Higgs particle are well-known to theoretical particle physicists, so it's not like you are revealing some great secret that they are keeping.

Exactly. I'm telling it how it is. And the true picture is very different to the cosmic-treacle nonsense which many people take as a given.

He did not, and no amount of text-thumping can change that.

Yes he did. In his 1905 paper Does the Inertia of a body depend upon its energy content?. It depends upon its energy content, not something else. You'll be dismissing E=mc² as cherry-picking text-thumping next.

News to me. Everybody in this business thinks that they are fields,

No they don't. Everybody in the business who knows anything about electromagnetism knows that the field concerned is the electromagnetic field.

even Maxwell and Einstein and Minkowski and others whom you are treating as prophets of revealed truth.

Wrong again. In his 1920 Leyden Address Einstein said "Of course it would be a great advance if we could succeed in comprehending the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field together as one unified conformation. Then for the first time the epoch of theoretical physics founded by Faraday and Maxwell would reach a satisfactory conclusion". He said electromagnetic field. Not electric field. Not magnetic field. Electromagnetic field. And in Space and Time Minkowski said "Then in the description of the field produced by the electron we see that the separation of the field into electric and magnetic force is a relative one with regard to the underlying time axis". And in 1864 Maxwell wrote A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field. Not electric field. Not magnetic field. Electromagnetic field. Sounds like you're preaching ignorance, lpetrich. Not a good thing to do on a skeptics forum.

Thumping snipped. He was trying to explain something in nontechnical terms, not reveal some great truth that the equations cannot supply.

As ever you attempt to dismiss bona-fide physics using a "text thumping" excuse. Here, read what the guy said, and this time pay attention to it: "Then in the description of the field produced by the electron we see that the separation of the field into electric and magnetic force is a relative one with regard to the underlying time axis; the most perspicious way of describing the two forces together is on a certain analogy with the wrench in mechanics, though the analogy is not complete".

 

[Perpetual Student]

Calculations based on a model of electron spin as a circulating electric charge underestimate this magnetic moment by a factor of approximately 2, the Landé g-factor. A correct description of this magnetic moment requires a treatment based on quantum electrodynamics.

LINK

 

[godless dave]

Yes he did. In his 1905 paper Does the Inertia of a body depend upon its energy content?. It depends upon its energy content, not something else. You'll be dismissing E=mc² as cherry-picking text-thumping next.

And what gives it that energy content?

No they don't. Everybody in the business who knows anything about electromagnetism knows that the field concerned is the electromagnetic field.

Wrong again. In his 1920 Leyden Address Einstein said "Of course it would be a great advance if we could succeed in comprehending the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field together as one unified conformation. Then for the first time the epoch of theoretical physics founded by Faraday and Maxwell would reach a satisfactory conclusion". He said electromagnetic field. Not electric field. Not magnetic field. Electromagnetic field. And in Space and Time Minkowski said "Then in the description of the field produced by the electron we see that the separation of the field into electric and magnetic force is a relative one with regard to the underlying time axis". And in 1864 Maxwell wrote A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field. Not electric field. Not magnetic field. Electromagnetic field. Sounds like you're preaching ignorance, lpetrich. Not a good thing to do on a skeptics forum.

As ever you attempt to dismiss bona-fide physics using a "text thumping" excuse. Here, read what the guy said, and this time pay attention to it: "Then in the description of the field produced by the electron we see that the separation of the field into electric and magnetic force is a relative one with regard to the underlying time axis; the most perspicious way of describing the two forces together is on a certain analogy with the wrench in mechanics, though the analogy is not complete".

None of that suggests that Einstein didn't view electric fields and magnetic fields as fields.

 

[Farsight]

Farsight: I am fully aware that decompositions of the electromagnetic fields into the E and B fields are relativistic, just as decompositions of spacetime into space and time dimensions are relativistic.

Electromagnetic fields Clinger? It's the electromagnetic field. And see above, like Minkowski said, E and B denote linear and rotational force. They aren't actually fields, because like Jackson said, one should properly speak of the electromagnetic field Fuv rather than E or B separately. And the electromagnetic field isn't like spacetime. You can move through space where an electromagnetic field is, you can't move through spacetime. It's a totally different animal. It's a mathematical space in which there is no motion because the time dimension is included. The Earth isn't surrounded by spacetime you know. It's surrounded by space. Yes we talk of curved spacetime, but things don't move through it.

In other contexts, you have claimed that gravitational fields are real, even though gravitational fields are observer-dependent.

They are real Clinger. Things fall down. An observer in a falling lift might beg to differ with me, but when he hits the ground he will be promptly disabused of that notion.

(That's Einstein's equivalence principle, BTW, which you have taken such great pains to deny.)

I haven't denied it at all. I've pointed out its limitation wherein a true gravitational field is only exactly equivalent to a pseudo-gravitational field resulting from acceleration in a region of zero extent. It's a principle, not something that claims you can create a gravitational field in space by moving through it in some particular way.

The E and B fields are observer-dependent also, but they're just as real as gravitational fields.

No they aren't. That's why Einstein said "Of course it would be a great advance if we could succeed in comprehending the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field together as one unified conformation".

You understand neither electromagnetism nor relativity. If you did understand those things, you'd know what a field is, and you'd know that E and B are fields...trivially...by the very definition of the word field.

No Clinger, I understand it. You don't. And you are resisting my efforts to tell you that Maxwell unififed electricity and magnetism a hundred and fifty years ago. Into the electromagnetic field.

I provided that link in my post above. You must not have read the Wikipedia article on fields in physics, because you're still making the same absurd claim.

Read your own link. Defining the field as "numbers in space" shouldn't detract from the idea that it has physical reality. The field creates a "condition in space". Like I said to edd, the field is a condition of space.

 

[Farsight]

Back on topic:

Cosmos may be 'inherently unstable'

Fascinating stuff.

I think it's sensationalist headline-grabbing speculation myself, and potentially dangerous talk:

"What happens is you get just a quantum fluctuation that makes a tiny bubble of the vacuum the Universe really wants to be in. And because it's a lower-energy state, this bubble will then expand, basically at the speed of light, and sweep everything before it," the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory theoretician told BBC News.

This is the sort of thing that will have the public demanding that high-energy physics experiments be curtailed forthwith.

 

[godless dave]

There are multiple electromagnetic fields, so I'm not sure why you're concentrating on the singular/plural distinction.

 

[ben m]

One problem is that in proton-antiproton annihilation we never see quarks.

Proton-proton annihilation is in complete agreement with QCD. QCD predicts that quarks are confined at low energy and free at high energy. In low-energy p-pbar annihilation, this predicts mesons; in high-energy annihilation, it predicts jets. Both of these are seen.

Another is that the lack of electron substructure does not account for the Einstein-de Haas effect or magnetic dipole moment.

We know you don't like the accounting. This doesn't mean it hasn't been accounted for.

And so on.

 

[Farsight]

You didn't provide evidence, or argument, or anything...

Oh here we go again. I refer to the evidence and bona-fide papers and articles, and I give explanations you can understand, and you just take the that's not evidence line, you've provided nothing. Reminds me of when I was telling a bunch of YECs about fossils and strata and carbon dating. All they ever said was that's not evidence, you've provided nothing.

The Einstein-de Haas experiment proves that intrinsic angular momentum is a type of angular momentum, and goes into the same conservation law. In the real world

In the real world the ferromagnetic material rotates.

Dirac (among others) was able to describe this momentum without assuming anything "going round", and that's perfectly consistent with all known facts about these particles.

In the real world a Dirac spinor isn't called a spinor for nothing.

Your[/I] mental picture already contained "something going round", and you read about de Haas and thought it agreed with your picture. That's all the argumentation you have here, and indeed it's fairly typical of you.

Not so. I've referred to electron models which have received scant publicity and which people like you dismiss. Because it doesn't fit in with your textbook bible which tells you the electron is a fundamental particle, don't worry about pair production or magnetic dipole moment, it's all just intrinsic point-particle magic.

"something going round" is so important, why can't you find an error (or a failed prediction) in Dirac's treatment?

I haven't tried. And I'm not minded to. See above. We can't get past first base on E=mc² or the electromagnetic field, so I don't think we'd get anywhere on what sort of a wave equation we have or what kind of current we're talking about or what a spinor is and how the hard scientific evidence tells us what we're dealing with. Besides, if I did come up something that Dirac said to support my case, lpetrich will dismiss it as text-thumping. There's no point, I'd be knocking myself out on what would turn out to have been a deliberate distraction with no sincerity behind it.

Proton-proton annihilation is in complete agreement with QCD. QCD predicts that quarks are confined at low energy and free at high energy. In low-energy p-pbar annihilation, this predicts mesons; in high-energy annihilation, it predicts jets. Both of these are seen.

Mesons are seen, jets are seen, but we've never seen a free quark. And remember that gluons are virtual particles. They aren't real particles. Remember that when you think of a quark-gluon plasma. Note that "the resulting matter does not behave as a quasi-ideal state of free quarks and gluons, but, rather, as an almost perfect dense fluid." Note this too: "some mesons built from heavy quarks (such as the charm quark) do not dissolve". See the words fluid and dissolve? A quark-gluon plasma is a bit like pea soup. There ain't no peas in it.

 

[godless dave]

"Fundamental particle" is not synonymous with "point particle"