'God particle' confirmation

[Super Nova]

Ahhh

It is consistence with the need of a Higgs Boson to stand up the "standard model". So now they need to really understand exactly what it is and how it really compares to the theory as it stands. They need to confirm that it is the "standard model higgs boson" or is it different. They need 3 or 4 years to confirm all of that.

It is very exciting. These scientists are excited.

When they get into it, our understanding of the universe will grow now.

Also it has pushed computing technology... help advance that.

Also how competition and co-operation in such experiments really makes it work.

[Super Nova]

What is the significance of it being the "first fundanmental scalar"?

[Mattus]

Extra lay summary:

You know how you can see light, you can feel light when it warms you... But have you ever wondered by it has no weight?

This particle is (probably) why.

[Super Nova]

They are really excited by it being the last scalar particle to be found experimentally.

A scalar boson is a boson whose spin equals zero. Boson means that it has an integer-valued spin; the scalar fixes this value to 0.

The name "scalar boson" arises from quantum field theory. It refers to the particular transformation properties under Lorentz transformation.

Examples
Various known composite particles are scalar bosons, e.g. the alpha particle and the pi meson. Among the scalar mesons, one distinguishes between the scalar and pseudoscalar mesons, which refers to their transformation property under parity.
The only fundamental scalar boson in the standard model of elementary particle physics is the Higgs boson. It is the only elementary particle in the Standard Model that has not yet been experimentally measured, although a Higgs-like particle has been observed at the Large Hadron Collider. There are various other hypothetical fundamental scalar bosons, including the inflaton.
One very popular quantum field theory, which uses scalar bosonic fields and is introduced in many introductory books to quantum field theories[1] for pedagogical reasons, is the so called -theory. It usually serves as a toy model to introduce into the basic concepts of the field.

[Super Nova]

Here is the latest up in the media.

http://news.uk.msn.com/god-particle-dis ... inganswers

Scientists have hailed the "momentous" discovery of what appears to be the "God particle" that gives matter mass and holds the fabric of the universe together.

Teams at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the £2.6 billion atom smashing machine near Geneva, say they have found a new sub-atomic particle "consistent" with the Higgs boson.

The results are preliminary and more work is needed before the scientists can be sure of what "species" of particle they have captured. But observations carried out so far show it looks and acts like the long-sought particle that has eluded them for 50 years.

Finding the Higgs is vital to the Standard Model, the theory that describes the web of particles, forces and interactions that make up the universe.

Without the Higgs boson to give matter mass and weight, there could be no Standard Model universe. If it was proved not to exist, scientists would have to tear up the theory and go back to the drawing board.

The announcement came at a packed seminar at the Geneva headquarters of Cern, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, where a tense audience heard the latest progress report from the LHC.

Speaking at a London briefing with a live link to the seminar, Professor John Womersley, chief executive of the Science and Technology Research Council, said: "They have discovered a particle consistent with the Higgs boson. Discovery is the important word; that is confirmed. It's a momentous day for science."

Scientists have confirmed that two of the LHC's giant detectors, CMS and Atlas, had delivered results that reached the definitive "five sigma" level of proof. A sigma is a measure of how likely it is that a finding is down to chance. At five sigma, the likelihood of a statistical fluke is one in a million.

Professor Peter Higgs, the retired British physicist from Edinburgh University after whom the particle was named, was in the Geneva audience. He dreamed up the concept of the Higgs mechanism to explain mass while walking in the Cairngorms in 1964. The unassuming Prof Higgs, who is known to shun the limelight, could now be on his way to winning a Nobel prize.

Professor Higgs wiped a tear from his eye as the findings were announced. He said later: "I would like to add my congratulations to everyone involved in this achievement. It's really an incredible thing that it's happened in my lifetime."

[annielaurie]

I am absolutely thrilled about this, I've have been waiting for its confirmation for a long time. This means to me, no more need for religion and mythology, reality now explained by scientific discovery.

In fact, the wonders of the universe as it actually is are ever so much more fascinating than earlier non-scientific attempts to explain creation and existence.

[Super Nova]

Hawking says it is the most important discovery so far this century.

''We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature,'' said CERN director-general Rolf Heuer, who will arrive in Melbourne for the conference tomorrow.

''The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed

studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle's properties.''

Asked if he would go as far as to say the new particle was a Higgs boson, Dr Heuer said: ''As a layman, I think we have it. But as a scientist I have to ask 'what do we have'? We have something. We have discovered a boson. And now we have to determine what kind of boson.''

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/origi ... z1zftwc33N

The link above takes you to the article, click on the video and it provides an overview of the importance of this discovery. (in Aussie accent)

[Super Nova]

Now the bitching begins for the Nobel.

SHould the Nobel systemchange to recognise more than 3 people since it takes teams of people to make a real discovery today.

it was announced less than 24 hours ago, but rows over who deserves credit have already broken out.

It’s good news for physicists, but a big headache for the Nobel committee.

The discovery - or near discovery - of the Higgs boson, will see someone win a Nobel prize, but deciding who deserves credit for the work is a minefield. Traditionally, the science Nobel prizes are given to a maximum of three people, whose contributions are judged to be the most important.

British physicist Peter Higgs congratulates the experiment team after last night's announcment. Photo: Reuters

The rule is archaic in that it harks back to a time when much of science was done by individuals or smaller groups. Two teams of scientists at Cern, amounting to thousands of people, carried out the painstaking work of spotting traces of the particle amid the subatomic debris of more than a thousand trillion collisions inside the Large Hadron Collider. All deserve credit for that effort.

But this is the least of the Nobel committee’s problems. The prize is more likely to go to theoretical physicists who worked on the theory almost 50 years ago. Here the parentage becomes more muddled.

Six physicists published the theory within four months of each other in 1964. They built on the work of others.


Physicists applaud the announcement last night in Melbourne. Photo: Angela Wylie

The first to publish, that August, were Robert Brout and Francois Englert at the Free University of Brussels. Brout died in 2011, and the award cannot be given posthumously.

Second to publish was Peter Higgs, with two papers on the theory in September and October 1964. In his second, he became the first to mention explicitly that the theory demanded a new particle in nature, which was given the name Higgs boson in 1972.

Third to publish was a group of three theorists, including two US researchers, Dick Hagen and Gerry Guralnik, and a British physicist, Tom Kibble. Their work was published in November.


Professor Geoffrey Taylor. Photo: Angela Wylie

All three teams worked independently.

So there are at least five living physicists who can lay claim to the Nobel prize. If the particle discovered at Cern is confirmed to be the Higgs boson, then Higgs is certain to be honoured. That leaves four physicists competing for two places. Englert published first, and would be hard to dismiss. That leaves one place.

Rows over who deserves credit have already broken out. In 2010, the US physicists complained when the organisers of a conference in Paris on the Higgs particle credited only Higgs, Englert and Brout for the theory.

The quandary raises a familiar issue for the Nobel committee. Restricting those honoured with a Nobel helps maintain their prestige. But in modern science, few discoveries are born in final form from so few parents.


Read more:http://www.theage.com.au/technology/sci ... z1zjhk1REN

[Mattus]

In the paper by GHK they proposed a massless decoupled boson. The one found by CERN is massive and coupled. EBH will probably get the prize.

[Super Nova]

The sinmplest lay description I have found.

First things first: the "Higgs boson" is a distraction. The easiest thing to think of is the "Higgs field". Like light has light waves and also light particles (photons). They were looking for the boson, the particle, because that's what they'd be able to spot. But the easiest way for you to think of it is as a field, like a magnetic field.

An analogy might be with planes and air. Big heavy planes move slowly through the air, because they're not very streamlined. Little fighter jets move more easily, because they are streamlined. But if they were in space, it wouldn't matter how streamlined they were: in a vacuum, the streamlining is irrelevant.

The Higgs field (in a very vaguely analogous way) does the same with matter. Before the Higgs field formed (about a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang), all particles flew around at the speed of light, because they had nothing to slow them down, like planes in vacuum. But once it formed, the heavy particles suddenly found they were flying through a treacly field, and had to slow down, like planes in air. Others – the photon – had no mass, and so carried on flying around at the same speed. The reason that heavy things are harder to push than light things is because they are less "streamlined" in this Higgs field than lighter things.

The Higgs particle, in this analogy, is like an oxygen or nitrogen molecule in the air: it's the particle that creates the air, but we can think of the air as a fluid.