Hey pal I got your Higgs Boson right here...
07-04-2012, 04:15 AM
#1
Thread Starter
Hey pal I got your Higgs Boson right here...
Apparently CERN thinks they have finally isolated the Higgs Boson according to http://www.businessinsider.com/cern-...s-boson-2012-7 , http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/20...-higgs-rumors/ and http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0704112237.htm
Many who know me know I'm not only vain 
but I do consider myself to be fairly smart as well 
but WTF???
Muons??? Leptons??? I had to look stuff up. I really wish I could understand the physics they are chasing.
"The results are preliminary but the 5 sigma signal at around 125 GeV we’re seeing is dramatic. This is indeed a new particle. We know it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found,” said CMS experiment spokesperson Joe Incandela. “The implications are very significant and it is precisely for this reason that we must be extremely diligent in all of our studies and cross-checks."
Event display of a H -> 2e2mu candidate event with m(4l) = 122.6 (123.9) GeV without (with) Z mass constraint. The masses of the lepton pairs are 87.9 GeV and 19.6 GeV. The event was recorded by ATLAS on 18-Jun-2012, 11:07:47 CEST in run number 205113 as event number 12611816. Muon tracks are colored red, electron tracks and clusters in the LAr calorimeter are colored green. The larger inset shows a zoom into the tracking detector. The smaller inset shows a zoom into the vertex region, indicating that the 4 leptons originate from the same primary vertex. (Credit: ATLAS Experiment, CERN)
but I do consider myself to be fairly smart as well but WTF???
Muons??? Leptons??? I had to look stuff up. I really wish I could understand the physics they are chasing.
07-04-2012, 04:55 AM
#2
I saw this. My +1 has been captivated for days reading, studying. I think he's in love. I find it interesting, but not enough to look up muons and leptons. I'm just excited where this discovery takes us.
07-04-2012, 06:44 AM
#3
I admire people who can understand this stuff. Personally, I never can grasp it - it makes my head spin trying to understand Boson spin. 
07-04-2012, 06:21 PM
#5
Thread Starter
My nephew is doing his PHD in theoretical physics out at UC Santa Barbara.
Apparently they were all rather worked up about it out there.
07-06-2012, 08:49 AM
#7
Maybe this will help in understanding. 
" Think of it a little like this: by smashing things hard enough, a little bit of the Higgs field got chipped off into a boson that could be measured before decaying. Sort of like throwing a rock really hard at a concrete wall -- eventually part of the wall will chip off. In this case, it was like a wall that only threw off a little bit of dust in response to a major collision, and then scientists were able to tell that the wall was there because they took a picture of the dust before it blew away. Except in this case the wall is also continuous and infinite, and invisible, and we all live inside of it, and it's what gives us mass, which is to say the quality of physical existence.
Which kind of explains why some have called the Higgs boson the God particle."
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07-06-2012, 12:26 PM
#8
Thread Starter
07-07-2012, 04:21 AM
#10
Who came up with the names of all those particles? Are they acronyms? The name of someones dog? Mythological?
A little Saturday morning research reveals that the term quark is from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
fltsfshr
A little Saturday morning research reveals that the term quark is from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
fltsfshr