CERN may well have spotted Higgs Boson

[FAST6191]

Cern Press release

Geneva, 4 July 2012. At a seminar held at CERN1 today as a curtain raiser to the year's major particle physics conference, ICHEP2012 in Melbourne, the ATLAS and CMS experiments presented their latest preliminary results in the search for the long sought Higgs particle. Both experiments observe a new particle in the mass region around 125-126 GeV.

“We observe in our data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of 5 sigma (5 sigma is a fairly impressive level of certainty vs it being a random reading), in the mass region around 126 GeV. The outstanding performance of the LHC and ATLAS and the huge efforts of many people have brought us to this exciting stage,” said ATLAS experiment spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti, “but a little more time is needed to prepare these results for publication.

There is a proper press conference later ( http://webcast.web.cern.ch/webcast/play_higgs.html is a decent start for a link) I believe but in the meantime they have some nice videos on their youtube channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/CERNTV/videos

If you want another video that covers a lot of good stuff (although it is not what all scientists will go in for) on basic subatomic physics, the idea here though it the Higgs Boson is the long theorised but little never seen particle that may well be responsible for things having mass which is kind of a big deal as so far why things have mass has been something of a mystery (quarks account for a lot but not everything).
TED: Garrett Lisi: A beautiful new theory of everything

 

[Fluto]

I understood nothing

 

[B-Blue]

I know some of these words.

 

[RupeeClock]

Simply put, the Higgs Boson is the "God particle", which is believed to give matter mass, and holds the physical fabric of the universe together.

We are on the cusp of understanding the absolute fundamental structure of the universe.

If you've seen the 8-bit episode of Futurama "Future Challenge 3000", where Farnsworth uses a microscope lens crafted from a diamondium comet to observe the smallest unit of matter, that gives you an idea of the significance of finding the Higgs Boson.

 

[mameks]

I wanted to post this ;v;
but FAST's posts are always better than everyone's so yay

it may well mean absolutely nothing for most people, but being one step closer to actually having proof of this particle will quite literally change everything, again aaaahahaha apple

as the HAL9000 put it

CERN is going to announce the Higgs Boson on Wednesday. I expect Apple to sue, iPhones have had mass since 2007

but seriously, once this has been properly um...'found' science and our understanding of everything will change.

 

[SifJar]

At the moment, the scientists seem to be mostly reluctant to call it the Higgs boson, instead going for "a new boson" as at this point, it is still unclear how close it is to the predicted Higgs boson from the standard model of physics. One of the most important properties I believe is the spin of the boson, which should be zero for the Higgs. They say they should be able to measure the spin at the LHC by the end of 2012. This is certainly a big deal in physics, and I'm glad I sort of understand some of the stuff being talked about.

 

[chavosaur]

I remember my physics teacher rambling on about the higgs boson all the time ans how it would "Revoloutionize sience and the way we view things in our world." Unfortunatly that class bored me and i never really listened to what he said so from what I basically understand this particle is what holds the fabrics of the universe together and gives matter its mass and whatnot. However if this is already theorized, if its proven, awhat does that change? That scientists were right, the theory is proven and then they teach the world about it?

 

[RupeeClock]

I remember my physics teacher rambling on about the higgs boson all the time ans how it would "Revoloutionize sience and the way we view things in our world." Unfortunatly that class bored me and i never really listened to what he said so from what I basically understand this particle is what holds the fabrics of the universe together and gives matter its mass and whatnot. However if this is already theorized, if its proven, awhat does that change? That scientists were right, the theory is proven and then they teach the world about it?

If the search to find the Higgs Boson turned up nothing, they would have to completely review their theories and think of something new.
However the discovery of the Higgs Boson has supported their theories thus far. Theories are typically in the ball park but not completely accurate as they are speculation, but with good reasoning.

 

[shakirmoledina]

I dont know what this means but I like the word "God"

 

[Costello]

everyone is saying that it's of utmost importance so I have come to believe it, but I am still trying to figure out what actual consequences this could have.
I'd like to read something more concrete and practical than just "it will revolutionize science".
what are the outcomes? as someone who is interested in science but never really studied it, I fail to perceive any of the consequences...

 

[jurassicplayer]

El Psy Congroo....

 

[chavosaur]

everyone is saying that it's of utmost importance so I have come to believe it, but I am still trying to figure out what actual consequences this could have.
I'd like to read something more concrete and practical than just "it will revolutionize science".
what are the outcomes? as someone who is interested in science but never really studied it, I fail to perceive any of the consequences...

Exactly my point, Id like to learn what in the world it changes. To be honest, my first impression was just that it would create a huge controversy with people with religious beliefs seeing as it is named the God particle. I was thinking that this kind of a "revoloution" was going to help prove other theories relating to the big bang and whatnot. Because i remember them speaking of this particle alot on the big bang theory as well

 

[mameks]

everyone is saying that it's of utmost importance so I have come to believe it, but I am still trying to figure out what actual consequences this could have.
I'd like to read something more concrete and practical than just "it will revolutionize science".
what are the outcomes? as someone who is interested in science but never really studied it, I fail to perceive any of the consequences...

Exactly my point, Id like to learn what in the world it changes. To be honest, my first impression was just that it would create a huge controversy with people with religious beliefs seeing as it is named the God particle. I was thinking that this kind of a "revoloution" was going to help prove other theories relating to the big bang and whatnot. Because i remember them speaking of this particle alot on the big bang theory as well

basically if this doesn't exist then Einsteinian physics could technically be a load of utter bollocks, and all our 'truths' could be called into question.
and the universe will implode[/i]

 

[BORTZ]

Uh... YAY science!

 

[SifJar]

everyone is saying that it's of utmost importance so I have come to believe it, but I am still trying to figure out what actual consequences this could have.
I'd like to read something more concrete and practical than just "it will revolutionize science".
what are the outcomes? as someone who is interested in science but never really studied it, I fail to perceive any of the consequences...

Basically, the Higgs boson is the (until now theoretical) exchange particle which gives all of matter a mass. It's existence essentially proves the standard model of the universe, which basically says there are 4 forces and 18 fundamental particles. The 4 forces are the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force and gravity. The particles are 6 quarks (quarks are the fundamental particles found within nucleons such as protons and neutrons, as well as other "hadrons" [hadron = anything containing a quark e.g. proton, neutron]), 6 leptons (leptons include electrons and similar particles of higher energy, as well as their [seemingly] massless partners neutrinos) and 6 bosons (bosons are exchange particles, such as photons [particles of light, responsible for electromagnetic force], each force has a boson - the Higgs is the boson for gravity, which gives matter it's mass).

At least, this is my understanding of it. There are probably slight inaccuracies in this explanation, but I think for the most part this is right. Also I realise that there are a lot of fairly technical words in here, hopefully you understand most of what I'm saying. Although I guess what I've said still doesn't show a huge amount of the significance of this discovery. Basically all I can say on that front is it's definite existence will prove the standard model, which greatly aids the potential for predicting the phenomenons of the universe.

EDIT: Calling it the "god particle" is something many "real" scientists disagree with, as it overplays it's importance. I believe it's a term used largely by journalists and the media, and in my opinion it is used mostly to cause controversy etc. It's important, sure, but it won't change a huge amount. We already know how many things work via observation (which is how we can predict the standard model), so even if the standard model wasn't completely accurate, it would not change a huge amount of physics - all the laws we already have based on observations will still stand. It just means any predicted laws based on our predicted standard model would have to be reconsidered.

 

[Gahars]

Come on, FAST6191, the science stories are my domain! Get your informed opinions out of here!

Seriously though, this is some damn impressive news. After countless years of research, we've finally found the "God Particle." I'm sure many toasts were shared between the LHC researchers.

For those interested, a lot of folks on Reddit have been posting threads to explain what all this means. Here's a small excerpt...

5) What does this mean for particle physics?
It means that the Standard Model, the model that describes weak, electromagnetic and strong nuclear interactions is almost complete. But that's not everything: we still have to explain how Neutrinos get masses (the neutrino oscillations problem) and also explain why the Higgs mass is so small compared to the Planck mass (the Hierarchy problem). So just discovering the Higgs would also be somewhat bittersweet, since it would shed no light on these two subjects.

Reddit

 

[Costello]

oh, but I have read that tens of times already Sifjar. I know pretty much all that you said.
Everytime I expect to read about what this will change for science, all I read is "this proves that we were right the whole time".
yeah, I get that... and then what? see, this is what I'm talking about. Still nothing about the consequences.
and don't tell me "it'll be the same as before, except now we know we were right."

 

[FAST6191]

In the near future I can not imagine much happening for ultra practical stuff primarily as other than pushing electrons and atoms to guide them into doing fun things not a lot has been done with the others and they have been known about for a considerable amount of time (the general idea being atoms are not so inclined to fall apart as most of nuclear physics is inclined to tell you and that a rather large atom smasher had to be built to explode things to see things on this scale just as well*).

*indeed it has been said that the first group to figure out how to manipulate things on a somewhat industrial subatomic level will become rather rich.

However as it is generally a good idea to understand what goes the level below what you are doing* and given that such limits are being brushed up against (things like quantum tunnelling of electrons making silicon chips not so good as gate sizes get smaller) and likewise it helps in predicting what might happen and although some computation is happening ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/02/material_science_on_petaflops_2d_to_3d/ and http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/news/casp.html being two examples) pretty much all chemistry and biology amounts to so much "what does this button do?" (one half of drugs research is find something that works and tweak something on it- what was a hydrogen is now methyl group and it works 20% better and the other half is either making it survive long enough to get where it needs to be or what happens if we mix this with this). If however you know that so many quarks make a proton which combines which goes to make an atom which has this effect on electrons which has this effect on the collection of electrons on other atoms which means things group together and this grouping means my [insert device] is far lighter and stronger/less overengineered than my competitor tends to mean good stuff.

*I R master myspace webpage designer (which may indeed be true) does not make it the staff that can touch the server but knowing what SQL and PHP about tends to sort of thing being an example of the logic.

 

[SifJar]

oh, but I have read that tens of times already Sifjar. I know pretty much all that you said.
Everytime I expect to read about what this will change for science, all I read is "this proves that we were right the whole time".
yeah, I get that... and then what? see, this is what I'm talking about. Still nothing about the consequences.
and don't tell me "it'll be the same as before, except now we know we were right."

Ah, apologies. I'm afraid it is basically a case of proving the theory was right, as far as I can understand. However, knowing the theory is right means that laws can be deduced from the standard model, so predictions can be made as to how various phenomena occur and how certain interactions will take place. In theory I believe it should mean laws can be "calculated", rather than observed based on experimentation.

 

[Janthran]

If this turns out to not be real it will disprove gravity.