[Cheiron]

There is a race going on between USA and EU, unknown to many... it is serious, it is merciless, both parties have taken the gloves off, we both go full tilt for the goal: To find the Higgs first !

What is Higgs?

We are in the realm of elementary particle physics. There is something called "the standard model" that describes the theory we have of the building blocks of nature. Elementary particles have three families: Electrons, Quarks and Bosons. The model has been functional for last 40 years with good results, but something is missing: The Higgs particle.

The standard model predicts that the Higgs particle must be there, and if it is not, uhoh.

IF the Higgs boson is not found, we can scrap our "standard model" ... and then we all have to go back to the drawing board for our description of the universe.

But if model has worked... uh why the importance, some will ask?

Here I have to go into something in the philosophical realm I have studied myself,... the logical basis for science and the problems in ontology. I will try to explain it loosely and short .)

A theory (or theorem) is fine, life is full of them, you wake up everyday with your head full of presumptions and theories you rely on, they might work, but if it has no basis in reality but is just a blueprint that happens to work practically, it is not describing reality. A theory does not only have to explain what happened but also has to predict, among other things (like the falsification criteria). If one thing negates the theory crucially, then you do not have an adequate theory of reality.. In practical life we sorta treat our theory building ad hoc, or our daily hypotheses are built on presumptions, dogma,..., if useful fine, if not we just blame it on the weather or something. In short we all live our daily life in a big mess of contradictory hypotheses, that we mistake for reality. We might feel we are well versed in what reality is, but if we should try to analyze it, we will soon wind up in a lot of mess logically.
In Science and Philosophy, that is not the case, they both have a demand that criterias for logical, epistemological and ontological coherence are met and that the theory is consistent, alas that is not possible ideally, cause ontology and epistemology are big issues in this equation of finding absolute truth.

But our models of reality has to be consistent... and as said, if that Higgs particle is not found... we have a huge problem with understanding the fabrics of the universe, and of course there is a lot of prestige in finding it first, to prove it is actually there.

The Race Scenario

The race exists between the new LHC (Large Hadron Collider), a large circle measuring 27 km in circumferance and that is situated 100 meters below surface at CERN outside Geneve in Switzerland consisting of a large particle accelerator. It is described as the largest scientific instrument ever made. Sadly, after 9 days of working, a technical error set it back big time in making the crucial discovery. It has cost a TON of euros !

One part of the complexity is that you get billions of collisions of particles to analyze, cause those little Higgs critters don't just pop up on demand. Hence a HUGE network of computers have been made worldwide, called THE GRID, to give analysis power to the results.

It's opponent is the older 6 km wide accelerator at legendary FermiLab outside Chicago, and the american scientists at Fermilab are scrambling 24/7 to beat the CERN to the discovery.

The large LHC will definately confirm or deny it's existense due to it's huge accelerator that will accelerate particles to just below speed of light. But will the americans beat them to it? Hmmm... well as an European, best of luck to our friends over there, the major thing is that we all get wiser, I think.

However, even if the americans by luck find it first, there is lots of use for the CERN accelerator... the elementary particle world is hugely complex, but as one scientist said: if they find it before us, I predict a lot of us jumping out of windows ... HEHE
_________________
Cheiron
______________________________
"Any scientist with respect for himself should start
the day by rejecting his own pet hypotheses".
(Konrad Lorenz)

"Wir müssen wissen
Wir werden wissen"
(David Hilbert)

[Scotsman]

There's still string theory if they don't find the Higgs. Course string theory they need to come up with some experiments to give it more weight.

Yeah, I have an armchair interest in physics too. Kind of have too if are interested in astronomy at all

[Cheiron]

Yeah ... string theory, a bit rusty on that, but remember reading about it long time ago. It had some explanation about that one change of state in one part of universe could change state instantly in another part of universe, quite freaky, cause usually we have a law that says, nothing can move faster than speed of light.

Well... basically we have just discovered one absolute truth during last 2500 years... and it was a greek that formulated it (Aristoteles): the principle of contradiction.

Reminds me of the paradox in estimating an electron position and speed.
Not possible, you can regard it as a particle, and can fix the position, but not speed. If you view it as a wave, you can estimate speed, but not position.

So is it a particle or a wave?

Or ... is our theory wrong?

Hm... think I will get my science books down from shelf and brush up on things... (have some good ones by Einstein, Bohr, Steven Hawking etc.) ...after all it is winter and those long evenings need a good book

PS: reminds me of one book in particular, that I can recommend:
John D. Barrow: The World within the World. [Clarendon Press. Oxford. 1988]
_________________
Cheiron
______________________________
"Any scientist with respect for himself should start
the day by rejecting his own pet hypotheses".
(Konrad Lorenz)

"Wir müssen wissen
Wir werden wissen"
(David Hilbert)

[Scotsman]

You should look up some of the new work on string theory. They've gotten as far as proving the math is solid. Where the current academic world is hung up (besides it's turning current theories on their head) is there are is no solid experimental backing. Even though the theory has predicted a few subatomic behaviors.

For those that don't know already, the world of the subatomic gets very strange and has it's own set of rules vs atomic physics. Which is why I have to think our current working set of theories and understanding is flawed.

[Cheiron]

WOOOT, WOOOT WOOOT !!!!!!!!

Today at March 30th, 2010 at 13.06 CET (summertime) it happened finally !!

The big accelerator (LHC) at CERN went fully functional again and the beams got stabilized and were brought to collision mode with proton collisions at .... hold steady now.... 7 TeV (TeV means Tera electro volts) All 4 experiments controlrooms worked... both ATLAS, ALICE, CMS and LHCb.

Well they made a mini Big Bang actually, being able to see further into the fabrics of nature than ever before, and the detectors worked flawlessly. Physicists on 5 continents went ecstatic with joy, cause this is a historic event, and who knows what we will find... maybe the Higgs, maybe we can actually detect super-symmetri, ...or maybe find something we never thought about. Under all circumstances elementary particle physics will be a very very busy part of modern physics lol.... because this is entering new territory.
Currently they are on about 60 events per second, but maybe they will go up to 3000

But it will take years to analyze all the data even with The Grid in place as described in above posts.

Fantastic work by thousands of scientists world wide, and it is only the starting point !
_________________
Cheiron
______________________________
"Any scientist with respect for himself should start
the day by rejecting his own pet hypotheses".
(Konrad Lorenz)

"Wir müssen wissen
Wir werden wissen"
(David Hilbert)

[Scotsman]

And golly gee wiz, imagine that, the earth wasn't gobbled up by any black holes it created

[Jade]

easy , easy u guys i have trouble enough with my borg and after reading all that I swear i heard a tiny fuse blow in my brain
Jade

[Cheiron]

Jade... to explain...

experimental particle physics is just like geology I think. ... You find a rock and think... hm. I wonder what that consists of ???... so you take a big sledgehammer and pulverize it to study ingredients with various analyzis methods/tools you have that are designed/based on the theories you already have.

Same with elementary particles... problem is... to break up a proton you need to direct what is equivalent of the energy of an express train to hit a single particle only and then have a big pile of detectors in place to record what happens. After that the recorded results are sent to analyzis. In this case a world wide network of scientists and puters to figure out what on earth happened.

When the scientists talk about "events" ... it means an impact between particles. ... so with 60 impacts per second... and they run it for months... you get a massive amount of data to scratch your head about.

Losely explained electron volts is a measure for kinetic energi of a single unbound electron. Just as with puters tera is a prefix... Tera is a biggy... more than Giga or Mega or Kilo... ... If you go up scale more than Tera you get Peta... ( I would love a Peta puter lol)

Btw... LHC is designed to go up to collisions at 14 TeV, which they estimate they will try out in a year or two...

LHC consists of two beams in opposite directions in a 27 km circle. Gradually protons are brought up to speed controlled by magnets all around circle. Each beam reach 3.5 TeV and then they move the beams to collide.... at a combined kinetic energy impact of 7 TeV. When they try out the 14 TeV thing, each beam will have 7 TeV. ( a hammer double the size they managed now )

Considering black holes etc... LOL ... it could be fun if the last thing everybody on planet heard was a big : SLURP ... and then vanished...
_________________
Cheiron
______________________________
"Any scientist with respect for himself should start
the day by rejecting his own pet hypotheses".
(Konrad Lorenz)

"Wir müssen wissen
Wir werden wissen"
(David Hilbert)

[Jade]

well thank you very much for the explanation, tho i did hear a liittle fizzle from another fuse , a dodgy one so i guess i better rest it, one thing for sure if i ever meet this higgs critter i will personally throttle him
Jade

[Cheiron]

Jade you asked at manor if they didn't get a permit for trying this out..... considering making a disaster on earth like black holes...

Well....as far as I know.... to make a black hole you need a very very very big load of mass... even our sun when it collapses eventually when the fusion reactions inside stops will just be a white dwarf (or red dwarf, can't remember, maybe Scotsman can correct me). It is prolly 1000 times smaller than suns that can turn into black holes, like Betelgeuse. (You can see Betelgeuse in the star formation Orion

Black holes are created out of mega big stars that implode... usually twin stars too, that slowly get too near and impact.

The funny thing about black holes is that gravity becomes so strong that it even sucks out time, time stops so to speak.

There's something about an "event horizon" from black holes... if you cross that, we just don't know what happens. So there is a connection between gravity and time, the stronger the gravity... the slower time gets. Odd indeed, but we have never understood what gravity really is yet. It's a mystery.

But rest assured... a collision of protons will never make a black hole

And about throttling the Higgs... if you meet it... hehe.. it is already inside you, if it exists
_________________
Cheiron
______________________________
"Any scientist with respect for himself should start
the day by rejecting his own pet hypotheses".
(Konrad Lorenz)

"Wir müssen wissen
Wir werden wissen"
(David Hilbert)

[Scotsman]

Last I heard it's believed our sun would devolve to a white dwarf. Course even if we lived long enough to see that, we wouldn't have a planet to stand on to watch as the sun will expand into a red giant first and consume the inner planets before it shrank.

As to the black hole thing, back before the hadron was finished there was a gent that filed a lawsuit to stop it's construction for fear it would generate a black hole.

His concern was one of the particles they want to look for is the graviton particle. That's the theorized particle responsible for gravity. His supposition was that if you isolated such a particle you wouldn't need a large amount of mass to create an enormous gravimetric field. If such a field were created even microscopically and it collided with matter it would consume that matter and become self sustaining.

The scientist working on the Hadron demonstrated in court that even if such a field were created it would only last a few microseconds and dissipate long before it could come into contact with any matter.

[Cheiron]

What really scares the crap out of me is gamma-ray bursts. It is the most single violent event in the universe.

As Scotsman explained a sun that dies develops into a supernova...or a red giant depending on size...
a big big explosion or expansion, swallowing up nearby planets in orbit around it and then it collapses. Very large suns can become neutron stars, pulsars or black holes... and in that process they can give a gamma-ray burst, which is like a directional beam of energy so powerful that it prolly is equivalent to the energy our sun emits in it's whole 10 billion years of life. Its an amount of energy in a single burst that you just can't fathom. However it usualy only lasts a few seconds luckily.

They were first discovered during the cold war, as far as I know, by american satellites monitoring nuclear activity on earth... and freaked the american military to nearly scramble for nuclear alert status because they thought it was the Russians that were up to something.

However it was discovered that it stemmed from gamma rays from distant galaxies... maybe a billion of light years from us. ( 1 light year is the distance a light beam travels at 300.000 km/s in a year *)

If a sun in our galaxy.. (the Milky Way) should develop a gamma-ray burst... and we get hit... it would mean: nite nite for us very very fast. As far as I know even gamma ray bursts far away does have an effect on ionosphere on earth occasionally, even if fantastically far away.

But the most immediate danger is prolly meteors.... this wabbit personally think we should all stick our heads together around planet, stop fighting and bickering about stuff and realize we sit on the same rock in space and use those bloody atom bombs for warding them off instead of designing them to throw at eachother, if big meteors come, which they will and have done... it doesn't take much to alter course of even a biggy heading our way, a well placed and timed hydrogen bomb directed at a meteor should do the trick

Isn't it just a cozy topic this... lol


* let's see 300.000 km/s .... uh 300.000 (kilometers) x 60 (seconds per minute) x 60 (minutes per hour) x 24 (hours per day) x 365 (days in a year) is = 9.460.800.000.000 kilometers in a year.. of course then you just have to multiply that with 1 billion... quite a walk, cough )
_________________
Cheiron
______________________________
"Any scientist with respect for himself should start
the day by rejecting his own pet hypotheses".
(Konrad Lorenz)

"Wir müssen wissen
Wir werden wissen"
(David Hilbert)

[Jade]