Comments on: Beam Day at the LHC

By: Calling a Crackpot a Crackpot | Cosmic Variance

Calling a Crackpot a Crackpot | Cosmic Variance — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:35:32 +0000

[...] John has already described, on Wednesday, the Large Hadron Collider will circulate protons for the first time, marking a [...]

By: First beam! « High Energy Mayhem

First beam! « High Energy Mayhem — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 21:33:26 +0000

[...] usual, the good folks at CV are on the ball. « Straight out of [...]

By: Count Iblis

Count Iblis — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:52:24 +0000

If you see some weak signal that could be the signature of some particle predicted by some theory and you want to translate that signal into a probablity that this particle has indeed been detected, you need to apply Bayes’s theorem and then you do need the prior probability that this theory is correct.

By: Martin

Martin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:18:53 +0000

John — yes, and the point about ‘mental probabilities’ is that if you want them to be consistent they actually have to obey the rules that govern probabilities, so it makes sense to talk about them that way.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherence_(philosophical_gambling_strategy)

By: Jason Dick

Jason Dick — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:16:46 +0000

I would tend to think that the primary problem with detecting new physics during this commissioning stage at 10TeV would be primarily an issue of luminosity, not necessarily an issue of the energy level reached. It’s still quite a bit above current levels, and also quite a bit above the levels that should be required to produce the Higgs. But won’t the primary obstacle simply be that the beam luminosity probably won’t get to the point where we’re capable of distinguishing new physics until around the time that they similarly ramp the energy up?

By: graviton383

graviton383 — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:07:21 +0000

I see Fermilab is having a `pajama’ party on Sept 10 & similar other LHCfests are being held at Brookhaven and in San Francisco (by SLAC and Berkeley)…looks like fun.

By: John

John — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:12:03 +0000

I guess I demand that anything we’d call a probability (or, colloquially a likelihood) is something that we can at least in principle measure. Is that reasonable? I now wonder whether we don’t all assign mental probabilities to things that we can never measure…

By: Martin

Martin — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:17:38 +0000

“In fact it’s not really even possible to say whether such a thing is “likely” or not (Sean’s earlier musings notwithstanding) since it will either be there or not.”

I see the frequentists haven’t completely died out yet, then…