They have certainly found something that is very close to the Higgs Boson predicted by the standard model of particle physics. How do they know its the Higgs?
> The standard model gives very specific predictions for the behavior of the Higgs, which are fixed by the distinctive properties of the Higgs field (spontaneous breaking of the SU(2) gauge symmetry fixes how it interacts with gauge fields, giving mass to fermions fixes its interaction with them). These predictions have for a long long time shown that if the Higgs mass is 125 GeV, it could not be observed until the energies and luminosities of the LHC were available, and then it should be seen with certain specific signal sizes in certain specific decay channels.
> What the LHC experiments are seeing is, after decades of no such signal in these and similar channels, signals appearing in just the right channels, with roughly the right signal size. If this isn’t a Higgs, it’s something very like it.
We don't yet know if whatever we see is or is not the SM Higgs. That's why the LHC is scheduled to continue running through the year, so we can get more details. All we can really say at this point is we see something. Heck, we've been able to say that from December!
and as a promoter science education reform. (I heard him speak on the latter subject in my town at a science museum a few years ago.) I agree with you that a term like that probably needs explanation in a popular article about physics, but I can think of much more harmful terms in popular articles about science.
Is 9 billion a lot? as an american, It's hard to see that as more than the operational cost of a fighter jet.
Just trying to manage the data from the LHC lead directly to the world wide web. I'm pretty sure there were a bunch of other technologies developed, like the superconducting cable that power those magnets, that will have a big long term payoff.
I mean, sure, it's a lot of money. I think we're getting NASA moon mission level of return on our money. Paying a bunch of smart people solve really hard problems does good things for everyone.
as an american, It's hard to see that as more than the operational cost of a fighter jet.
Not sure if you're being ironic but a fighter jet typically costs a couple of orders of magnitude less than $9B - even the hugely expensive JSF (F-35) is 'only' $200M unit cost.
You're right. My estimate is off by a bit over an order of magnitude for the f-22. they cost just under 50,000 an hour to operate (http://hatch.senate.gov/public/_files/USAFResponse.pdf)
you could certainly operate more than 10 of them for 9 billion.
I think a B-2 will come close to that though. 1 billion in todays dollars and 130,000 an hour for operational costs. -it's not actually 2000 a minute, there's a bunch of work before and after each flight.
I 'm a little wary whether we get our money's worth from those huge international projects like LHC or the ISS. I would like to see a comparison of the general impact that previous smaller collaborations had compared to projects of this size.
I think that is a general misconception. Each time we increase our understanding of something, we also gain new tools to solve questions. Think of this as long term investments for humanity, then the price is microscopic.
There is a lot of politics in this. Particle Physics is not the only area where we have unanswered questions or need more tools (but it does have a spectacular track record and influential community behind it).
Oh I agree there are many other areas. But no other area than physics have given us so many inventions, because no other area is a fundamental as this. We are playing with as close to universals as we can come here.
Just think about the amount of years it took from the inception of QM up to today and how much it has given us in return.
Extraordinay returns require extraordinary investments. But yes there is a limit obviously.
What I think the GP is saying is that its unfortunate that this experiment only confirmed our understanding of physics rather than increasing it. We only learned that our suppositions about QM were correct, there weren't any of the anomalies that have led to new physics in the past.
Personally, I'd say that $9B is a fair price to pay for confirmation, but I'd have been happier to get more.
Actually, it's possible to to prove that something doesn't exist. It depends on how well defined it is. For example, you can take the dragon in the garage from Sagan's Demon Haunted World.
If you're not familiar with it, the example is a guy who claims to have a dragon in his garage. When you attempt to look for it, not being able to see it, the guy says 'it's an invisible dragon.' And likewise the story continues, each time, there is a reason provided for why the dragon cannot be found.
The issue here is that it's a very poorly defined dragon.
Let's consider the strongly defined dragon. If I claim that there is an 8ft, red, visible, fire breathing dragon sitting on the ground in my back yard, a simple search will disprove that statement. There is no evidence to be found of that dragon, and it can be safe to say that it doesn't exist.
However, if I then say, 'well, the dragon isn't really visible,' then I've changed what you're looking for, and the search must be conducted with those new parameters.
The case with the higgs is similar. It can be possible to say 'a higgs with these properties does (or does not) exist.' If you say 'well, what if it has these different properties' well, it doesn't invalidate those previous results; it just provides you with something new to do.
The core mistake here is that 'absence of evidence' is not always 'evidence of absence,' but many times it is. In the same way that 'correlation is not causation' but many times it is.
It's a steal. We spent a quarter of a trillion dollars on the Shuttle program and ISS. And about $133 billion on the GM bailout. The Higgs theory will have unknown implications that will resound for centuries. Spending 0.03% of a single year's GDP of the US+EU is a small price to pay for such a fundamental insight into the nature of our Universe.
Consider that LHC cost only a fraction the ridiculous amount of money wasted each year on war.
It justifies it's cost merely by it's existence, increasing fascination in understanding, instead of destruction.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/07/higgs-boson-breaks...