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Author Topic: "God particle" close at hand?
Boom Boom
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posted 08 April 2008 12:43 PM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
At 78, scientist hopes for proof soon that he was right about the Universe

excerpt:

The Higgs boson was the professor’s elegant 1964 solution to one of the great problems with the standard model of physics – how matter has mass and thus exists in a form that allows it to make stars, planets and people. He proposed that the universe is pervaded by an invisible field of bosons that consist of mass but little else.

As particles move through this field, bosons effectively stick to some of them, making them more massive, while leaving others to pass unhindered. Photons, light particles that have no mass, are not affected by the Higgs field at all.

The mysterious boson postulated by Professor Higgs, of the University of Edinburgh, has become so fundamental to physics that it is often nicknamed the “God particle”. After more than 40 years of research, and billions of pounds, scientists have yet to prove that it is real. But Professor Higgs, 78, now believes the search is nearly over.

A new atom-smasher that will be switched on near Geneva later this year is virtually guaranteed to find it, he said. It is even possible that the critical evidence already exists, in data from an American experiment in Illinois that has yet to be analysed fully.


From: Make the rich pay! | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
martin dufresne
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posted 08 April 2008 12:51 PM      Profile for martin dufresne   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Well, it's obvious God has Mass... and Dad can drag you there by your shirt if you rebel.
From: "Words Matter" (Mackinnon) | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Boom Boom
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posted 08 April 2008 12:56 PM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Oh, Lord - is this another thread that will be derailed???
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Proaxiom
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posted 08 April 2008 12:57 PM      Profile for Proaxiom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 

From: East of the Sun, West of the Moon | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
martin dufresne
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posted 08 April 2008 01:11 PM      Profile for martin dufresne   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Response to Boom Boom's "Oh Lord"
As gospel luminary Albert E. (Sheila's Dad) put it, "E=mc2 + please don't let me be misunderstood..."

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]


From: "Words Matter" (Mackinnon) | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Boom Boom
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posted 08 April 2008 02:22 PM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
martin and Proaxiom:
From: Make the rich pay! | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
Snuckles
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posted 08 April 2008 03:36 PM      Profile for Snuckles   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
And Rush Limbaugh is none too happy about it
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Proaxiom
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posted 08 April 2008 03:51 PM      Profile for Proaxiom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I'm pretty good at mimicking the noises made by a chimpanzee, much to the delight of my three kids, the oldest of whom is 5. I am under no illusion that the sounds I make would actually be intelligible to a chimp who might hear me, but my kids can't tell the difference.

In that way, my kids are like Rush Limbaugh's audience when he talks about science.


From: East of the Sun, West of the Moon | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
Boom Boom
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posted 08 April 2008 04:14 PM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I like this comment which follows the article I posted as the OP:

Research like this is the reason why we have Satellites, Radio Waves and a host of advanced inventions. If research is not supported, there will be fewer people interested in Science. Already, we are seeing the signs of a dumber populace in the US where the average person is not interested in anything even remotely scientific.

US is spending $10 Billion per month on the war in Iraq. Clearly, all of that money can be much into better use by supporting scientific programs.


From: Make the rich pay! | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
martin dufresne
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posted 08 April 2008 04:20 PM      Profile for martin dufresne   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
My favourite line in the original post has to be this pending proof of the existence of God (as boson):
quote:
It is even possible that the critical evidence already exists, in data from an American experiment in Illinois that has yet to be analysed fully.
Film at eleven.
quote:
US is spending $10 Billion per month on the war in Iraq. Clearly, all of that money can be much into better use by supporting scientific programs.
Ah, little grasshopper, it may take a village to raise a child, but it certainly takes an oilfield to run a CERN!

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]


From: "Words Matter" (Mackinnon) | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Boom Boom
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posted 08 April 2008 04:47 PM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by martin dufresne:

Ah, little grasshopper, it may take a village to raise a child, but it certainly takes an oilfield to run a CERN!

That's just mean.


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Boom Boom
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posted 08 April 2008 04:52 PM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Snuckles:
And Rush Limbaugh is none too happy about it

Rush Limburger is priceless.


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500_Apples
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posted 08 April 2008 05:16 PM      Profile for 500_Apples   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Just in case some of you guys are wondering, there is a lot of consternation in the press about worries this accelerator might produce mini black holes and destroy the Earth.

I can assure you all that this will not happen with complete confidence. This may be the largest human experiment ever conducted, which will as such advance science, but energies 100 million times greater are observed to hit the atmosphere due to cosmic rays. And they don't destroy the Earth. Secondly, even if mini black holes are produced... they would be mini black holes, they would evaporate before travelling anywhere. And even if black holes don't evaporate, they would pass right through the Earth, like neutrinos do.

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]


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jrootham
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posted 08 April 2008 05:50 PM      Profile for jrootham     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
No, I don't expect there to be a disaster. However, I don't think I'd be quite as sanguine about black holes as all that. The evaporation part is good, and a good thing too. The gravity gradient around a black hole would seem to make it very unlikely that it would be quite as non interacting as neutrinos.

What happens if the black hole takes up an orbit that intersects the earth and gathers mass on its journey?


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500_Apples
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posted 08 April 2008 06:04 PM      Profile for 500_Apples   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by jrootham:
No, I don't expect there to be a disaster. However, I don't think I'd be quite as sanguine about black holes as all that. The evaporation part is good, and a good thing too. The gravity gradient around a black hole would seem to make it very unlikely that it would be quite as non interacting as neutrinos.

What happens if the black hole takes up an orbit that intersects the earth and gathers mass on its journey?


jrootham,

First of all, "gravity gradients" don't matter, all that matters is gravity. The popular media teaches that black holes are vacuum cleaners, but that's false. If the sun collapsed into a black hole tomorrow, the Earth would keep rotating around the sun in exactly the same manner, however it would freeze due to lack of sunshine.

A mini black hole would not weigh as much as the sun. It would not weight a gram. It would, due to the energies involved at the LHC, it would weigh around 0.00000000001 grams (that number of zeros). As gravity is the weakest force that would not matter. Does dust fall on you (70, 000 grams) because of your gravity? No. Molecules don't care about gravity, they only care about electricity and magnetism, gravity is so much weaker that theorists don't bother to include gravity in their calculations, and they still get the right answer to the limit of experimental precision (12 significant figures).

Neutrinos actually don't interact with the Earth because of gravity, but because of the weak nuclear force, which is much stronger than gravity. A mini black hole would only interact due to the gravity of 0.00000000001 grams, and would as such be non-interacting.

ETA:

It can't take up an orbit and intersect the Earth. Everything produced at the LHC will be going at 99.99...% the speed of light. That's way beyond the Earth's and the Sun's escape velocity.

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]


From: Montreal, Quebec | Registered: Jun 2006  |  IP: Logged
Proaxiom
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posted 08 April 2008 06:13 PM      Profile for Proaxiom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Aside from black holes, I have read that there is no reason to fear this will cause the Earth to be gobbled up by a strangelet.

Which is good, because if I'm going to be gobbled up by something, I'd like it to have a slightly more serious-sounding name.

Like global catastrophe due to a Gamma Ray Burst. Now that has a formidable ring to it.


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Agent 204
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posted 08 April 2008 06:13 PM      Profile for Agent 204   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
That's the big question, isn't it? The main argument in favour of the safety of these experiments is that the energies produced is less than the amount of energy produced when certain cosmic rays strike the upper atmosphere, and these cosmic ray collisions happen all the time but the Earth is still here. For this to go wrong, three things would have to happen:

1. A micro black hole (or something else equally dangerous- see below) would have to be produced by the collision.

2. The micro black hole produced would be moving much slower than the colliding particles (possible in a head on collision) so that its velocity is less than the escape velocity of the Earth, AND

3. Black hole evaporation, as predicted by Hawking, either does not happen or happens slower than he predicts- slowly enough that the black hole would acrete more mass than it loses through evaporation.

Now 3 is perfectly plausible (the basis for Hawking radiation is entirely theoretical at this point, though the idea seems sound enough)... except that given the number of cosmic ray collisions with the upper atmosphere that have occurred it seems unlikely to me that the situation described in 2 would not have occurred at some point- unless the black holes never appeared in the first place.

Another nasty scenario has been raised- the creation of a stable strangelet which could cause matter it contacts to also turn into strangelets. Again, the risk of this seems low, though a caveat exists in that most models for cosmic ray collisions producing strangelets involve positively charged ones which (it is hoped) would be prevented from colliding with nuclei by repulsion, but that some particle accelerator experiments might produce negatively charged strangelets, with drastically different results.

In any case, apparently no evidence of strangelets has been found in either accelerators or cosmic ray collisions, so I'm not too worried about this.


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Proaxiom
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posted 08 April 2008 06:17 PM      Profile for Proaxiom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Agent 204:
Now 3 is perfectly plausible (the basis for Hawking radiation is entirely theoretical at this point, though the idea seems sound enough)...

As a non-expert who reads some science blogs, I have been led to think that the hypothesis that a micro black hole could possibly be created by such an experiment is strongly linked to the hypothesis that Hawking radiation exists, and therefore we are likely to get both or neither, which makes us safe either way.


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500_Apples
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posted 08 April 2008 06:30 PM      Profile for 500_Apples   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Proaxiom:

As a non-expert who reads some science blogs, I have been led to think that the hypothesis that a micro black hole could possibly be created by such an experiment is strongly linked to the hypothesis that Hawking radiation exists, and therefore we are likely to get both or neither, which makes us safe either way.


Hawking radiation is standard physics, quantum mechanics and stat mech and GR.

Mini black holes are General Relativity... but not at these energies. There's an estimated 10% chance of seeing them if theories of extra dimensions are true.

ETA: you can still get mini black holes from particles accelerators in known rather than speculative physics, but you'd need much, much, much higher energies than 7 Terra-ElectronVolts.

[ 08 April 2008: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]


From: Montreal, Quebec | Registered: Jun 2006  |  IP: Logged
martin dufresne
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posted 08 April 2008 07:00 PM      Profile for martin dufresne   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I must admit that sometimes I, an atheist, silently pray for a black hole to swallow humanity (or at least the complacent drivel part).
From: "Words Matter" (Mackinnon) | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged

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