Comments on: Science! It Marches On

By: J Gregory Moxness

J Gregory Moxness — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 23:24:11 +0000

I offer an explanation of a Higgs @ 124.443 GeV http://theoryofeverything.org/wordpress/?p=563

By: Sean Carroll says: Science! It Marches On « UnEntangleMe

Sean Carroll says: Science! It Marches On « UnEntangleMe — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:45:19 +0000

[...] to Sean’s excellent summary of the results. I don’t think I could do any better explaining it and besides I’m too [...]

By: Albert Z

Albert Z — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 04:13:01 +0000

Sean: “The Higgs has been around for 13.7 billion years, it will still be there tomorrow.”

So you assume it actually exists?

Before we have adequate proof?

Are you absolutely sure?

I would say the “Higgs conjecture” has been around for decades, and whether or not it has already exceeded its shelf-life remains to be seen, perhaps by summer 2012.

Let’s at least present a modicom of scientific objectivity to the public.

Albert Z

By: Qubit

Qubit — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 22:45:19 +0000

It can’t be as easy as 123. It should be a lot lower than 123, I mean come on what kind of a universe wants to exist! Or even needs to?

By: Noel25

Noel25 — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 21:35:06 +0000

Have we not learned anything from the past year or so with several other “hints” of important particle physics discoveries that never panned out? The same thing has been true of the dark matter searches in which several “hints” have turned out to be mirages e.g CDMS II, Pamela, etc.

My speculation is that since many of the breakthrough confirmations that many physicists have been hoping for a long time have yet to occur, there is a sort of desperation kicking. Hopefully the desperation will end soon so a refocusing of efforts in other theoretical directions can more easily occur. I predict that by this time next year what typically has happened will happen again: nothing, and we will be laughing about all of the ado over “hints” of a Higgs c. December 2011.

By: Science! It Marches On | Cosmic Variance | Full Power News

Science! It Marches On | Cosmic Variance | Full Power News — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:36:42 +0000

[...] from: Science! It Marches On | Cosmic Variance Posted in Cnn News, Futured News « BBC World News Gets Xfinity TV Distribution Yahoo! [...]

By: John Kerr

John Kerr — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:15:32 +0000

Santa is real, though not at 5 sigma (yet).
“Anything that can happen, does happen” – Brian Cox.

By: Thorny

Thorny — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:04:56 +0000

Those data are also quite consistent with a Higgs at 145 GeV (almost 2 sigma, that’s 90% ). I think there’s a tiny little bit too much hype around this, so let’s just wait a year and not try to see the black cat in the dark room.

By: Mi resumen de la conferencia ATLAS+CMS sobre la búsqueda del bosón de Higgs en el LHC del CERN « Francis (th)E mule Science's News

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:03:52 +0000

[...] Carroll, “Science! It Marches On,” Cosmic Variance, 13 dec. 2011. Os copio un extracto en inglés: ”ATLAS gives 3.6 sigma local significance, 2.3 sigma [...]

By: Better than Average Links – Week of Dec 11, 2011 | Scrub Physics

Better than Average Links – Week of Dec 11, 2011 | Scrub Physics — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 04:04:55 +0000

[...] LHC has shown tantalizing hints of the Standard Model Higgs particle, but another year of data collecting will be required for any sort of [...]

By: Bob

Bob — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 04:01:02 +0000

With almost 2.5 sigma, doesn’t that still mean a confidence level of about 95%? Granted that doesn’t mean certainty, but I’d think it at least means probably.

By: Science Tuesday: from the Higgs Boson to the ID Bozos…. « blueollie

Science Tuesday: from the Higgs Boson to the ID Bozos…. « blueollie — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 02:53:37 +0000

[...] special interest to me is how the data is being crunched and how it is interpreted (Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance): The news from Geneva this morning is in. Essentials: what [...]

By: Jason Dick

Jason Dick — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 02:04:33 +0000

Just a small comment. Because of our prior theoretical expectation to see a Higgs, and given the exclusion of most of the allowed mass range, to me it seems rather likely that this is real. While normally a detection of this magnitude of an unexpected particle should be treated with extreme skepticism (as in nearly all 2-3 sigma events go away), the fact that we have a strong prior reason to believe that the Higgs should be here means, to me, that it is more likely than not that this is real. I wouldn’t want to say it’s 90% likely, but perhaps 60%-70% likely. But in any event we will know for sure in a few years.

So yeah, I agree with Sean here.

By: Michael Pierce

Michael Pierce — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:43:54 +0000

ok, I’ll bite. Why does the 1 (or 2) sigma region extend the same amount above and below the expected values? Wouldn’t you expect the plus/minus sigma to get distorted by the log scale of the plot?

When I try to read off approximate numbers, it clearly looks like an asymmetry. Take the top plot, left side for instance, an expected value of 2 with a 2sigma low of around 1 and a high of almost 4.

By: marcelo

marcelo — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:43:11 +0000

Ok, wait wait (it’s precisely the whole point of this blog) although very likely to be considered as discovered soon, I would still put the Higgs as hypothetical too: strong evidence doesn’t mean a discovery, as Dorigo said. The gravitons have not been discovered yet as quantum particles, however, the binary pulsar leaves no doubt about the existence of gravitational waves, which are also to be detected in a more direct fashion in the forthcoming years.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:32:37 +0000

@19, 20 and 22
Thanks. I’ll have to crack open my (seriously out of date) particle physics book over the Christmas break.

Also I did know about gravitons, but I was just mentioning particles which have been discovered and gravitons are still in the hypothetical category.

By: Sean

Sean — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:29:42 +0000

Actually the Higgs does mediate a force, just like any other boson. As marcelo says, the graviton is spin-2, so it’s not only spin-1 bosons that give rise to forces. I mentioned this in a talk years ago:

http://preposterousuniverse.com/talks/universelab05/img11.html

Like the weak force, the Higgs is so massive and short-ranged that it doesn’t lead to bound states between any known particles; unlike the weak force, it also doesn’t mediate the main decay channel for any known particles. So its force-ness is not very manifest.

By: Anonymous_Snowboarder

Anonymous_Snowboarder — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:16:20 +0000

I’m in the unconvinced camp. Stats are weak (yet) and Atlas and CMS conflicting in certain channels. Whatever. What bothers me is that I really don’t think CERN should have done this dog and pony show over these ‘results’. Leaked or not, they are not worth the hype. Kind of like saying ‘the Redcoats are coming!” before they even put their coats on because, well, you know they are coming some day.

By: marcelo

marcelo — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:11:42 +0000

…”So will the Higgs be responsible for a new force? And if so, what is it called?”

Ans: the divine force, of course, what else ! (just kidding).
By the way, you forgot the gravitons—> gravitational “force”. They have spin 2

By: max

max — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:05:18 +0000

Chris, the Higgs is pretty fundamentally different from the force-carrying bosons in the standard model. All of the (purportedly) fundamental bosons that we have discovered are vector gauge bosons. They are spin-1, and they can be thought of as the necessary ingredients to satisfy the various gauge symmetries. The Higgs, on the other hand, is a scalar particle. It doesn’t have a spin at all. It’s mixed up with the W and Z bosons in a somewhat complicated way (it gives them their mass via the Higgs mechanism), but it doesn’t create a new force of nature.