Long-sought 'God Particle' cornered

[Dave (imported)]

Well, I left so much out that just drives people crazy.

Consider this --

A) There is a large Black Hole at the center of our galaxy (The Milky Way) that keeps the galaxy together thanks to gravity. Big, big thing. A partcile of dust falling into the Black Hole is accelerated to the speed of light. The black hole is stationary (sort of).

B) According to Einstein, if we take an object and push it to higher and higher speeds, we reach a limit between energy and mass governed by E=mc*c or mass times the speed of light squared. If we push enough energy into that object, eventually we reach the speed limit or if we keep increasing the mass, we reach the point where it collapses into a black hole moving very fast. Einsteinian mechanics collapses into numbers that are meaninglessly large and impossible. The energy demand becomes infinite. Think of a curve on a graph that rises like a straight line up. Certain parts of the graph (to the left and right) are impossible to reach.

C) Quantum Entanglement where information is passed (or seems to be passed) at a instantaneous speeds. Einstein called it "spooky" but accepted that his mechanics would never describe it and Quantum Mechanics would, eventually.

What goes on inside those two black holes? Quantum mechanics might tell us but we don't have the full description of off all of the particles and the four forces.

SO the question is, once we know the "set" of all particles and their interactions, can we devise a way to use Quantum Entanglement or can we make an object travel faster than the speed of light without infinite energy demands? The real possibility is in making computer storage faster and smaller. Also, if we can "cause" quantum entanglement then can we us it too transmit information/messages at speed faster than light? How about no time delay to talk to the Moon or Mars colonies?

OF course the theoretical questions are mind boggling -- what exists inside a black hole? Or what happened before the big bang when all matter and energy was an infinitely small point? Those are the questions that permit the hype of "God Particle" to be attached to the Higgs Boson.

[moi621 (imported)]

Correct!

Once you comprehend the Higgs Boson, harness and focus enough energy

You can make a Star Trek food materializer, praise to the God Particle

that sustains mass from energy even as food stuffs.

[Riverwind (imported)]

Well, I left so much out that just drives people crazy.

Consider this --

A) There is a large Black Hole at the center of our galaxy (The Milky Way) that keeps the galaxy together thanks to gravity. Big, big thing. A partcile of dust falling into the Black Hole is accelerated to the speed of light. The black hole is stationary (sort of).

B) According to Einstein, if we take an object and push it to higher and higher speeds, we reach a limit between energy and mass governed by E=mc*c or mass times the speed of light squared. If we push enough energy into that object, eventually we reach the speed limit or if we keep increasing the mass, we reach the point where it collapses into a black hole moving very fast. Einsteinian mechanics collapses into numbers that are meaninglessly large and impossible. The energy demand becomes infinite. Think of a curve on a graph that rises like a straight line up. Certain parts of the graph (to the left and right) are impossible to reach.

C) Quantum Entanglement where information is passed (or seems to be passed) at a instantaneous speeds. Einstein called it "spooky" but accepted that his mechanics would never describe it and Quantum Mechanics would, eventually.

What goes on inside those two black holes? Quantum mechanics might tell us but we don't have the full description of off all of the particles and the four forces.

SO the question is, once we know the "set" of all particles and their interactions, can we devise a way to use Quantum Entanglement or can we make an object travel faster than the speed of light without infinite energy demands? The real possibility is in making computer storage faster and smaller. Also, if we can "cause" quantum entanglement then can we us it too transmit information/messages at speed faster than light? How about no time delay to talk to the Moon or Mars colonies?

OF course the theoretical questions are mind boggling -- what exists inside a black hole? Or what happened before the big bang when all matter and energy was an infinitely small point? Those are the questions that permit the hype of "God Particle" to be attached to the Higgs Boson.

Why didn't you say so in the first place.

River

[janekane (imported)]

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The proof of symmetry with the Higgs boson may do exactly that - give us the mathematical tools to describe the four fundamental forces in one set of equations. That would join Newtonian and Quantum mechanics. Those two systems are not joined now. Newtonian mechanics fails at high speeds and really, really tiny distances. Quantum Mechanics cannot describe big things, only the very tiny interactions. A joining of the two, would advance our understanding of the universe.

Actually, the research I do is based on understanding how quantum mechanics is directly applicable to the entire scale of what exists and what "what exists" does. The reason many folks think that quantum mechanics does not describe what is immensely gigantic as well as what is infinitesimally tiny is not a property of quantum-mechanics as such, and is, instead an artifact of mis-use of certain forms of analytical maths.

That is not an argument I am willing to defend here; I have demonstrated its validity to folks with whom I am acquainted who dabble, post Ph.D level, in theoretical physics.

A problem that is seemingly unsolvable may be so merely because no one stumbled on the necessary methodology.

[janekane (imported)]

Perhaps I can "avoid blowing my cover," while describing a fact. I got my bioengineering doctorate, doing work which one committee member described to me as plausibly being "a completely new paradigm" by using the maths of large-scale quantum mechanics. When I explained to that committee member, in formidable detail, my methodology, that member said to me (this is verbatim), "You could not have gotten the data any other way."

I began working at making sense of quantum mechanics while in grade school, and set out to test the sense I was finding with large objects. It works. I have the maths. "Immense-dimension-space, complex-variable, analytically trans-computational, tensor calculus." Such maths are beyond the ken of any plausible binary-digital computer; quantum-computing is the only approach I have even been able to glimpse.

[Dave (imported)]

Jane,

Remember that I'm a chemical engineer and not a physicist. My explanations to RIVER don't go to muons, gluons and all that more detailed stuff about force moderators because I know that face-to-face, that's when people's eyes go all rolly and blinky and confused.

And RIVER, it's not that my explanation to you is wrong, nor is it condescendingly simple. It's just the plainest explanation I can make without invoking lots of jargon and detail that only confuses.

Bear in mind that with four basic forces - gravity, electromagnetism, the nuclear strong force and nuclear weak force. That means there are really four sets of particles and those particles and fields (that the particles cause) are many and varied. Gravity is a force like the force you feel in two magnets. Certain electron configurations generate an electromagnetic field. The Higgs Boson generates a Higgs Field that is responsible for causing what we call mass and mass generates gravity.

That's the next little sliver of information and it has many details that start not to be intuitive. I mean to say two magnets are intuitive but the Nuclear strong and weak forces are not intuitive, nor easy to explain.

This is the Theory of Everything - all four dimensions, time, space, gravity, electricity, matter, energy, everything all in one set of mathematics equations and math descriptions. (my bet is that there is more to it then just the Higgs Boson. there are undiscovered particles and unseen symmetries yet to be discovered. But I"m a lunatic anyway)...

That's why when a reporter starts to write a great explanation of this, his article hits an editor and they both fall back on "God Particle" ...

[punkypink (imported)]

Actually, does this mean they've found the Higgs Bosson, or are they just getting a better idea of where to look?

This science is stuff that excites me, but they've either found it or not, and if I was running CERN once in awhile I'd put out some "we're getting close" announcements to keep the interest up. Why? With interest comes funding.

[Dave (imported)]

Actually, does this mean they've found the Higgs Bosson, or are they just getting a better idea of where to look?

This science is stuff that excites me, but they've either found it or not, and if I was running CERN once in awhile I'd put out some "we're getting close" announcements to keep the interest up. Why? With interest comes funding.

Both - they might have seen the Higgs Boson and they have a better idea of how and where to look in the electromagnetic spectrum.

As I understand their decision process, the chance of crashing two protons (or whatever they are crashing together) and producing a real Higgs Boson is something like one-in-a-million or one-in-a-billion. And we all should know that it is possible at that low level to see a false reading and get a bad result. The Higgs Boson might have just appeared naturally in the middle of the experiment. That's the trouble with one-in-a-million to one-in-a-billion events. Chance happens (like shit happens). Or as others say "Mother Nature is a bitch"...

So to get around the problem of chance versus very small probabilities, the scientists demand several things:

First, a confidence level at the main lab of less than one chance in a million or a billion that they are seeing a mistake. They aren't at that confidence level yet. Then they turn all that raw data over to an independent lab for a second analysis and see if the second set of scientists can find the signals of the Higgs Boson in it and to the same confidence level. Then, I think they will publish the results formally and let everyone in the world who can understand it, take potshots at it to see if they can knock it down.

(added: We call those confidence levels STANDARD DEVIATION in mathematics).

Painful to consider a process that fraught with failure, isn't it?

Remember the "cold fusion" discovery? Remember the "faster than light particles" that never really existed? These scientists are being very cautious with what they have as evidence.

As they conduct the experiment and analysis, they will be able to say with great certainty that the Higgs Boson has to exist in a particular energy range and have a particular mass even if they cannot say with an equal certainty that the Higgs Boson actually exists. It's like seeing a piece of paper someone dropped on the ground. We know the person exists but not what the person looked like. Or let's say it's like walking into a house and seeing a meal set on the table with no one there. The meal implies a person exists but we can't see them.

(Added: We can see the decay products of the Higgs Boson but not the Higgs Boson itself.)

So that's as best as I can explain it.

[Riverwind (imported)]

Some time in the future, a couple million years from now a space ship comes by, looks at this solar system with awe as they had never seen a planet with a big chunk out of it, like it blew up or blew out. They sent down some equipment to take a closer look and found that a civilization had once flushed. As one said, its all gone, they wondered what could have caused it, and the other said, looks like they were playing with god. Further invitation revealed that the beings of this planet were splitting atoms, and messing with nuclear material, nothing can live on this planet, lets move on to the fourth planet in this solar system and see if it can be Terra formed. Why said the first one, why did they do that when everybody know all they needed to do was.....................

And the rest was lost to space,

Sorry, I just could not help myself.

River

[Dave (imported)]

smile! wink!

Not today or tomorrow. I'm sure of that.