Thread: The Higgs Boson -- Found

Originally Posted by Bishadi

there is no perfect vacuum between any 2 points of mass (postulate)

One can understand this perspective, but this is just one perspective. If you believe the uncertainty principle is a fundamental law of physics, then yes, this would be true. But I do not believe it is, although that may be a minority opinion amongst theoretic physicists. The truth is that it is not actually known for certain. I neither believe that particles exist as points, nor that their true existence expands outward undefined. I think there is an interplay between space and mass, and in a way, trying to define the exact size of a particle would be a meaningless concept, as counterintuitive as that sounds. Remember, our conceptions of distance are all relative. When we try going down to small distances, no fine grade ruler exists. Trying to see how many subatomic particles fit within a given area does not work either, for more complicated reasons I am not going to get into (have you heard of a Bose–Einstein condensate?)

Originally Posted by Bishadi

vacuum energy? it the em within the environment that is always there.

No, we are discussing extremely high energy levels. If it was ordinary electromagnetic radiation it would be enough to vaporise the earth. But at much much longer wavelengths - so long it would be impossible to directly detect - matter would become transparent to this energy. Again, the vacuum energy is not very well described by official theory. The phenomena of rogue waves could explain the transient formation of virtual particles - and why these particles are unable to permanently impart energy to a system.

Originally Posted by Bishadi

the warped part is believing information is traveling via a particle versus its entanglement

No, we are talking about two different things. It is possible to exceed the speed of light - if that speed is through a medium. For example light travels only half as fast through cubic zirconia as it does through air. In fact, physicists recently were able to slow the speed of light down to the speed of a running human (over a very short distance): http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/....18/light.html

There is no reason why the "speed of light" cannot be exceeded if the "vacuum" is altered (analogous to space being "warped"), and no, it would not make the light go back in time! That the vacuum can be altered ("rarified" for lack of a better term), at least to a very small extent, is already demonstrated by the Casmir Effect. Recent experiments have already suggested that neutrinos can exceed the speed of light, throwing "conventional" notions into question.

There may also be "non-linear" effects. At high enough energies, a particle could potentially interract with the vacuum, changing the "speed of light" it experiences. Since the vacuum energy is extremely dense, we are unlikely to see such effects demonstrated in particle accelerators any time soon.

oh. yeah. sure. AGAIN. First time this year though. They're just needing to get their name out there....must be grant time.

Originally Posted by Anders Hoveland

There may also be "non-linear" effects. At high enough energies, a particle could potentially interract with the vacuum,

For a related effect, one might also read: http://physics.aps.org/story/v23/st2
"quantum blurring"


There have been calculations how what this vacuum energy density actually is, all of which are absurdly large. I cannot find a reference now, but found this: "Zeldovich suggested that the anomaly was due to the uncertainty principle in quantum theory, which endows empty space with energy. Sadly, his calculation of this 'zero point energy' was 10^120 times bigger than the effect it was supposed to account for". Considering that the effect it accounts for is enough to produce W bosons to facillitate the the weak force, which have 80 times more rest mass than protons, I think it goes without saying this energy is ridiculously large.

Originally Posted by Anders Hoveland

This is just my opinion (not that of established theory) but I do not regard black holes as a "singularity". The only singularity is when (or if) all the mass in the universe ever collapses on itself. My guess is, when this happens, the size of the singularity will approach the Planck contstant (which is very very small, but higher energy correlates to smaller wavelength so this is to be expected) where all the matter-energy in the universe would exist as a single coherent standing wave. This would be a set up for another "big bang" of course.

What do you think about dark matter? I've found myself thinking that it may not actually exist, but rather that space-time itself has mass which accounts for it. In fact, here's a thought about gravity: Where there is "normal" matter, something happens to reduce the "mass" of space-time, if reduction would be the proper idea. Its effects are reduced, or maybe just altered in some strange way. When you get to the galactic level, though, you're looking at massive expanses of space without all of that "normal" mass filling it, so perhaps the space surrounding galaxies actually ends up exerting a kind of effect. Actually, this may be another property of what we call a gravity well - perhaps that "falling" effect also encompasses a kind of "pushing" force towards or into the well from without, i.e. from the less distorted/undistorted space-time beyond. Such an effect might account for the appearance of more mass in a gravity, as it would maybe help to keep what's in the galaxy in the galaxy, and would form kind of barrier at its periphery that is not unlike the idea expressed in Star Trek, where the Enterprise encountered a kind of barrier at the edge of the galaxy. Now, granted the barrier wouldn't be anything so severe as what's seen in that series, nor something so acute in its area, but rather a gradual building up of space-time mass which collectively has the observed effect on the gravity.

In other words, there may simply be more to gravity than what is currently theorised and modelled, and the effect would likely be extremely small, if indeed at all existent, within a gravity, where there is so much normal matter already distorting the space-time. It wouldn't be all that observable on such a "small" scale as, say, a solar system, either because the effect is too weak at that scale or because all of the other surrounding distortions from the normal matter would nullify it..

Originally Posted by Durandal

What do you think about dark matter?

I tend to think it is composed of clouds of neutrinos and all that vacuum energy (ultra-long wavelengh electromagnetic energy that cannot be detected by ordinary means)

A more simplicistic explanation could be that there might be many more dead brown dwarfs than cosmologists realise.

The interesting thing is that when one looks out on the largest scale structures of the universe, it seems to form a foam-like structure with filaments, resembling sea foam floating near waves.



While some scientists interrpret this as "negetive" energy, I think it could indicate, just as with the water, a cohessive force of "empty" space, pushing ordinary matter to the side lines. Perhaps not really surprising if the mass density of vacuum energy is much higher than ordinary matter. I am not sure, I have not really thought much about this.

NOTE THE DATE:
Bad News for Higgs Boson. Higgs Bogus??

God Particle May not Exist After All

August 24, 2011

Photo: Statue of the Hindu god, Shiva Outside Cern Headquarters in Geneva


A particle believed to have played a key role in the creation of the universe might not exist after all, a media report said Tuesday quoting experts.

Scientists said last month that they were close to cornering the elusive Higgs boson or ‘God particle’ – a tiny but vital element in the construction of life as we know it.


But hope is now fading after the disappearance of signals scientists had hoped would lead them to it, the Daily Mail reported.

The CERN research centre, whose giant Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been carrying out the work under the mountains on the French-Swiss border, announced its scepticism at a conference in Mumbai.

Guido Tonelli, from one of the two LHC detectors chasing the Higgs, said: “Whatever the final verdict on Higgs, we are now living in very exciting times for all involved in the quest for new physics.”

CERN said new results, which updated findings that caused excitement at another scientific gathering in Grenoble last month, “show that the elusive Higgs particle, if it exists, is running out of places to hide”, the Mail reported.


The centre’s research director Sergio Bertolucci told the conference at Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Fundamental Research that if the Higgs did not exist “its absence will point the way to new physics”.

Under what is known as the Standard Model of physics, the boson – named after British physicist Peter Higgs – is posited as having been the agent that gave mass and energy to matter just after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.

As a result, flying debris from that primeval explosion could come together as stars, planets and galaxies.

In the subterranean LHC, which began operating in March 2010, CERN engineers and physicists have created billions of miniature versions of the Big Bang by smashing particles together at just a fraction under the speed of light.

The results of those collisions are monitored by hundreds of physicists, not just at CERN but in linked laboratories around the world which sift through the vast volumes of information generated by the LHC, the Mail said.


For some scientists, the Higgs remains the simplest explanation of how matter got mass. It remains unclear what could replace it as an explanation.

Originally Posted by MisLed

NOTE THE DATE:
Bad News for Higgs Boson. Higgs Bogus??

God Particle May not Exist After All

August 24, 2011

Photo: Statue of the Hindu god, Shiva Outside Cern Headquarters in Geneva


A particle believed to have played a key role in the creation of the universe might not exist after all, a media report said Tuesday quoting experts.

Scientists said last month that they were close to cornering the elusive Higgs boson or ‘God particle’ – a tiny but vital element in the construction of life as we know it.


But hope is now fading after the disappearance of signals scientists had hoped would lead them to it, the Daily Mail reported.

The CERN research centre, whose giant Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been carrying out the work under the mountains on the French-Swiss border, announced its scepticism at a conference in Mumbai.

Guido Tonelli, from one of the two LHC detectors chasing the Higgs, said: “Whatever the final verdict on Higgs, we are now living in very exciting times for all involved in the quest for new physics.”

CERN said new results, which updated findings that caused excitement at another scientific gathering in Grenoble last month, “show that the elusive Higgs particle, if it exists, is running out of places to hide”, the Mail reported.


The centre’s research director Sergio Bertolucci told the conference at Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Fundamental Research that if the Higgs did not exist “its absence will point the way to new physics”.

Under what is known as the Standard Model of physics, the boson – named after British physicist Peter Higgs – is posited as having been the agent that gave mass and energy to matter just after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.

As a result, flying debris from that primeval explosion could come together as stars, planets and galaxies.

In the subterranean LHC, which began operating in March 2010, CERN engineers and physicists have created billions of miniature versions of the Big Bang by smashing particles together at just a fraction under the speed of light.

The results of those collisions are monitored by hundreds of physicists, not just at CERN but in linked laboratories around the world which sift through the vast volumes of information generated by the LHC, the Mail said.


For some scientists, the Higgs remains the simplest explanation of how matter got mass. It remains unclear what could replace it as an explanation.

Methinks one must always be careful of the sensationalistic stories published about such topics.

Do ya think the statue of the god shiva says anything about what has influence over them?

Originally Posted by MisLed

Do ya think the statue of the god shiva says anything about what has influence over them?

Lucifer?

Originally Posted by Anders Hoveland

I do not believe it. It will take much more confirmation to convince me. Mass is related to gravitation, and likely the background vacuum energy, not some heavy transient short-distance boson.
This find might turn out to be some other new particle, which would still be an important surprising discovery.

I was an immediate believer (and still am) when they announced neutrinos had been observed to exceed the speed of light, so I am not a close-minded person when it comes to these types of things.

We can see, for example, with the Mikheyev–Smirnov–Wolfenstein effect that the effective mass of neutrinos can be altered by their surrounding environment (much like the refractive index of the medium light propagates through), so there is no reason not to expect that the vacuum energy would not similarly give mass to matter.

While you may be correct in the first part about the Higgs, it's undeniable that the experimental results for neutrinos did not show them exceeding the speed of light.

Originally Posted by Durandal

I have a layman's question: If the Higgs allows matter to exist and affords it its mass, is it also responsible for neutrinos and their mass? Is the Higgs behind every little particle, e.g. electrons?

That stuff about altering mass by changes in surrounding environment is very interesting to me, because it fits with gravity being the result of how matter and the "space" around it interact. It's quite interesting and fun to ponder the fundamentals of existence itself.

You're correct.