Physics in the News – Higgs Boson

Note;  A Hypothesis can be any idea that someone dreams up. It does not require any proof or logical basis.

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See also “How Physicists “find” their Particles”, which gives my prediction on 25th June 2011 and why. If you really want to understand about the problem with the Higgs Boson you need to understand how physicists ‘find’ them and all their other ‘particles’.

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Extract from above post. Posted on 25th June 2011

“Tevatron teams clash over new physics.”

All the above comments also apply to the Tevatron accelerator in the USA, currently in the news. I suspect that they are struggling to find a magic particle to enable them to keep the unit open. (It is due to close shortly.)

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“The rare beauty of modern physics is that it is completely untainted by reality.” Brian Williams

From http://ww.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16116236

Q&A: The Higgs boson

Changes in Red are by Brian

The Higgs is a theorised [Hypothesized] sub-atomic particle – one of the “fundamental” ones that are the most basic building blocks of the Universe. Unlike atoms, these fundamental particles are not thought to be made up of anything else. The Higgs is so important because it helps the current best-guess theory [Hypothesis]of the Universe – the Standard Model – explain how other particles obtain mass. The theory[Hypothesis] has it that as the Universe cooled after the Big Bang, [another hypothesis]an invisible force known as the Higgs field formed together with its associated boson particle. This field imparts mass to the other fundamental particles.

What’s so important about mass?

Mass [Inertia] is the resistance of an object to changes in its velocity. Without this Higgs field, the Universe would be a very different place – particles would zip through the cosmos at the speed of light. The way this field confers mass on other particles has previously been likened to the way water in a swimming pool makes it harder for you to move when you try to wade through it. The Higgs field permeates the Universe the way water fills a pool. [Mass has nothing to do with ‘fields’, ‘charges’ or swimming pools.] This paragraph is complete waffle. A magnetic field could reduce the speed of an object, but it would not affect its inertia or its mass.

How do we know the Higgs exists?

Strictly speaking, we do not, and that is what is so exciting about the announcements to be made at the Large Hadron Collider – the giant experiment that was built in part to hunt for the Higgs. The particle was first proposed in 1964 by six physicists, including the Edinburgh-based theoretician Peter Higgs, as an explanation for the property of mass.

The Standard Model is an instruction booklet for how the cosmos works – a framework that explains how the different particles and forces interact. But one chapter of the booklet remains unfinished – unlike the other fundamental particles, the Higgs has never been observed by experiments. [ What they are saying is that if they cannot find the mythical Higgs Boson, they can spend billions of £s attempting to find some other mythical particle.]

How do scientists search for the Higgs boson?

Ironically, the Standard Model does not predict an exact mass for the Higgs itself. Particle accelerators like the LHC are used to systematically search for the particle over a range of masses where it could plausibly be. The LHC works by smashing two beams of protons [Protons are another type of mythical particle.]together at close to light speed, generating other particles. It is not the first machine to hunt for the boson. The LEP machine, which ran at Cern from 1989-2000, ruled out the Higgs up to a mass of 114 gigaelectronvolts (GeV; thanks to the equivalence of mass and energy laid out in the equation E=mc2, [The seriously incompetent formulae from Einstein.] particle physicists talk about the energy in accelerators’ beams and the masses of the particles they look for in the same terms). The US Tevatron accelerator searched for the particle above this mass range before it was switched off this year. These data are still being analysed, and could yet be important in helping confirm or rule out the boson, say physicists. The LHC, as the most powerful particle accelerator ever built, is just the most high-profile of the experiments that could shed light on the Higgs hunt. [Note: The constant search for mythical particles is mainly due to Einstein’s faulty mathematics]

When will we know if we have found it?

The Higgs boson is unstable; if produced among the billions of collisions at the LHC, it will quickly decay into more stable, lower-mass particles. Physicists have to infer the production of a Higgs using these decay products. Hints of the Higgs would look like a little spike or “bump” in physicists’ graphs. Results at the LHC and elsewhere carry a mark of approval in the form of statistical certainty – the degree to which observations are likely to be due to real effects, rather than statistical flukes that crop up in billions of collisions. A standard of “five sigma” is required to turn such hints into a discovery. This means there is less than a one in a million chance that the bump is a statistical fluke. It is almost certain that scientists at the LHC will be able to announce results at this level.

What if we don’t find it?

Most professional physicists would say that finding the Higgs in precisely the form that [the] theory [Hypothesis] predicts would actually be a disappointment. Large-scale projects such as the LHC are built with the aim of expanding knowledge, and confirming the existence of the Higgs right where we expect it – while it would be a triumph for our understanding of physics – would be far less exciting than not finding it. If future studies definitively confirm that the Higgs does not exist, much if not all of the Standard Model would have to be rewritten. That in turn would launch new lines of enquiry that would almost certainly revolutionise our understanding of the Universe, in much the same way as something missing in physics a century ago led to the development of the revolutionary ideas of quantum mechanics.

Brian