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Update on the search for the Higgs boson at CERN

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W

Wray

Member
This is fantastic news. Been waiting for this day.

Now we need to prove the existence of the Graviton!
 
H

Himynameischris

Member
Oh I wish I wasn't so tired from work I would love to watch this, I normallyi wouldn't understand half of what they say, no chance I understand anything right now :p
 
K

krameriffic

Member
Chichikov said:
But they didn't really patch the standard model though, not since the 70s.
And man, a discovery of the Higgs boson is probably going to be a great victory for the standard model (though we really don't know yet for sure).

Also, there were HUGE strides in theoretical physics in the last century.
Bohr model was published 99 years ago, we've come a long way baby.
Click to expand...

There's so much stuff beyond the standard model, so much that it doesn't include, and so many efforts have been made to try to tweak it, change it and include these phenomena within it. The reason why I say we're on the brink of a conceptual shift is because many physicists don't think the standard model is "fixable" in a traditional sense. It's an effective low energy field theory, in the parlance of the field, for something bigger and better, much like how Newtonian mechanics is an effective theory for low velocity relativity or large distance and time scale quantum mechanics.

When I say the last hundred years, I mean the past century. I mean the transition from "classical" to "modern" physics. What we've figured out since that shift is details. All of the wonderful details that arise from the fundamental conceptual shifts of quantum mechanics and relativity. The strides we have made are within that particular theoretic framework. What I'm talking about is not a stride, but a change of the framework entirely that ushers in things that absolutely could not exist within the standard model.
 
K

krameriffic

Member
Dead Man said:
This is true. The standard model is also incomplete. I am very weak on cosmology though, so all I can do is parrot books I have read.
Click to expand...

And when you think about what it sets out to explain and the fact that it does it in just a few lines of a Lagrangian based pretty much entirely around symmetries, it's pretty damn elegant.
 
F

Feature

Banned
They have nothing. They seem to be presenting this at some high school class... Would expect big announcements to be made in a much bigger room.
 
K

krameriffic

Member
Feature said:
They have nothing. They seem to be presenting this at some high school class... Would expect big announcements to be made in a much bigger room.
Click to expand...

It's an academic colloquium that is probably closed off to media and solely being presented to people who work at CERN on high energy physics. It's a live academic presentation, not a press release by professional PR people.
 
phisheep

phisheep

NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
Feature said:
They have nothing. They seem to be presenting this at some high school class... Would expect big announcements to be made in a much bigger room.
Click to expand...

There's a much much larger room on site with a video feed of it.
 
phisheep

phisheep

NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
I think the presentation order is significant. CMS is getting close, Atlas has probably found it.
 
L

Leezard

Member
They're pretty much just showing how credible and good the detectors are at the moment. Hopefully that will lead up to a more final result on Higgs.
 
K

krameriffic

Member
Leezard said:
They're pretty much just showing how credible and good the detectors are at the moment. Hopefully that will lead up to a more final result on Higgs.
Click to expand...

Yeah, they're talking about how they've progressed in both the theoretical modeling of the interactions as well as the quality of data collection and data processing (of which they have an absolutely ridiculous amount to do).
 
M

Mindlog

Member
All this time he's been trying so hard to stay within his allotted time. He's really condensing everything. The payoff was there.
 
C

Cartman86

Banned
DeathNote said:
I have no idea where there was an applause...
Click to expand...

From putting together various sources it seems to be that they hit 5 sigma for detecting a particle which means they are 99.999% sure that they have discovered something. A higgs like particle, but they haven't specified what it is yet?
 
M

Man

Member
Marco Delmastro ‏@marcodelmastro
Adding that #CMS WW channels brings 5 sigmas to 5.1 (5.2 expected). There's no room fro doubt… #Higgs #ICHEP2012 #CERN #HiggsDiscovery
 
K

krameriffic

Member
Cartman86 said:
From putting together various sources it seems to be that they hit 5 sigma for detecting a particle which means they are 99.999% sure that they have discovered something. A higgs like particle, but they haven't specified what it is yet?
Click to expand...

Most of the (what sounds like jibber-jabber to average people) was explaining how they try to exclude "other things" from the data in addition to removing background noise and other crap from the data.
 
N

Norml

Member
bGT1i.jpg


hmm
 
X

XMonkey

lacks enthusiasm.
9:45 am (Sean): And now for decays into a tau lepton and an anti-tau. Another tough one to pick out over the background. Joe is surprised that they did as well as they did.
And … no sign of a Higgs in that channel! Very small significance, but potentially a very intriguing result. Could mean that we have something Higgs-like, but not precisely the Standard Model Higgs.
9:46 am (John): First surprise – where are the tau pair decays?
9:48 am (Sean): Total significance: 4.9 sigma. It went down because of the absence of tau decays. But that could secretly be good news!
Click to expand...
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/07/03/live-blogging-the-higgs-seminar/
 
C

CiSTM

Banned
9.44am: Rolf Heuer, Director General of CERN, offers this verdict:


As a layman I would say: I think we have it. You agree?
 
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