If it looks like a Higgs....

[Kulindahr]

and splats like a Higgs, is it the Higgs boson?

Many are saying yes, that the particle-smashing scientist club has tracked down at last the infamous "God particle" without which all the other particles would have just spent forever buzzing around the universe at the speed of light instead of clumping to make stars and galaxies and planets... and us.

It's the final building block for our understanding of physics. "It's a boson" is all some would concede, sort of like admitting it's a dog, but not necessarily one's own cocker spaniel. Yeah, they're cautious -- but as others asked, "What else could it be?"

The fringe is speculating that now that we've found it, maybe we can learn to use it -- like, antigrav cars, or spaceships, anyone?


Here's a serious view.

 

[Stardreamer]

So should we build a shrine and alter in the center of the CERN complex?

 

[EastMed]

Wonderful news. CERN is utterly amazing.

 

[jft245]

Its not real until Leonard and Sheldon say so.

 

[EastMed]

I have to add that John Ellis in the video I posted looks like your archetypal theoretical physicist!

 

[Kulindahr]

So should we build a shrine and alter in the center of the CERN complex?

Only when we can capture and keep a naked Higgs boson in a bottle.

Wonderful news. CERN is utterly amazing.

Superb illustration!

Someone noted last night on the tube that had Congress not cancelled the big collider in the midwest before it was finished, the Higgs would have been cornered five or more years ago, in an appropriate place for big things: Texas.

I have to add that John Ellis in the video I posted looks like your archetypal theoretical physicist!

Or Dumbledore's cousin.

 

[White Eagle]

I'm so glad you brought this into the forum.. Now, Kuli, maybe I can learn something about this.

 

[Kulindahr]

The direct implications are unknown. Every physicist working at CERN I have listened to has said as much. It is important for future theory to have confirmed the existence of this boson, which more likely than not will turn out to be the Higgs. Investigating the nature of dark matter and dark energy, accounting for the vast majority of the matter and energy in the universe, will depend heavily on this scalar field's existence. Physicists can now rest that further building on the Higgs model for the effects of spontaneous symmetry breaking will not be a stab in the dark (i.e. there will not be billions of dollars wasted on investigating technicolor theory).

Let it not be lost that the computer and materials engineering expertise developed at CERN is priceless, especially with regards to cloud computing, and safe handling of superconductivity and supercooling.



The Superconducting Super Collider at Dallas was in the works before computer technology could handle the results quickly and efficiently. Though it was to be much more powerful than the LHC. While that would not be such a handicap as far as 125 GeV particles are concerned, as even the weaker Tevatron picked up on Higgs signals, the LHC's luminosity can only go so far. If sparticles exist or M-theory is true, it will be more difficult to confirm them at the LHC than it would have been at the massive SSC planned for Dallas.

I envision the ultimate collider: around the moon's equator.

 

[Kulindahr]

It's common sense that the luminosity of circular accelerators is limited by their circumference. It is harder to hold onto a playground turntable as it spins faster. The same energy loss in particle accelerators is called bremstralung, and at high enough energies, the particles lose as much energy as is being put into them. The equation is very complex, but I surmise that on the moon you could achieve amazing luminosities in the EeV range. Higher luminosities, of course, correspond to a state of the Universe further back in time. The LHC can achieve this to 10^-6 or so seconds after the Big Bang. That seems incredibly short, but in the timeline of symmetry breaking and condensation, it's unfortunately quite a long time. I would like to see an accelerator capable of creating the grand unification epoch right after the first planck second, 10^-43, in order to observe all the forces of nature under one roof. The dabbling in theory about grand unification is annoying. Lets get some results!

Btw, I think it would be still cheaper and easier to build an accelerator around the Earth's equator. It would be still bigger and further shielded from cosmic radiation.

Ah, but see, on the moon once they'd discovered the deep secrets of the universe, they could use the collider to increase the moon's gravity and restore its spin, so all it would need was atmosphere and water and people could live there like on earth . . .





<nostalgia> I haven't heard the word bremstralung in a long time.

 

[Kulindahr]

Oh -- JB, concerning a giant collider, the moon is a better place because there aren't any oceans to cross, no land to purchase through eminent domain, no building codes.....

 

[hotatlboi]

Oh -- JB, concerning a giant collider, the moon is a better place because there aren't any oceans to cross, no land to purchase through eminent domain, no building codes.....

No the moon isn't better. Even with all that earth is orders of magnitude cheaper.

 

[bankside]

The collider doesn't have to be a perfect circle. It wouldn't have to touch any ocean on Earth, save a few stretches of sea. A pound costs $50,000 to launch into space, well justifying any land purchases on Earth that aren't in the wild tundra, steppe, forest, or desert. Don't neglect that we are talking about engineering feasibility well in the future anyway.

Jockboy, you're not thinking this through. The launch costs will fall significantly once we have antigravity. All we need to do is fill up enough boson cannisters and attach them to the moon rocket and voilà!

 

[Kulindahr]

Heck, if we're going to talk future technology, wait till we can put up elevators to orbit, and just hang the collider in a big loop around geosynch altitude. Hang it from a structure we could call the "Hoop" (command center: Hula), and companies wouldn't need to orbit satellites any more, they could just bolt them to the Hoop.

 

[Kulindahr]

Jockboy, you're not thinking this through. The launch costs will fall significantly once we have antigravity. All we need to do is fill up enough boson cannisters and attach them to the moon rocket and voilà!

Gack. Science fiction is one thing; let's not descend below grade C.

 

[hotatlboi]

Heck, if we're going to talk future technology, wait till we can put up elevators to orbit, and just hang the collider in a big loop around geosynch altitude. Hang it from a structure we could call the "Hoop" (command center: Hula), and companies wouldn't need to orbit satellites any more, they could just bolt them to the Hoop.

I don't think that works because a solid structure looping around the earth would not really be orbiting the earth, it could move in any direction relative to the earth, so it might crash into it. A space elevator works because the tension on the cable is maintained by the orbiting counterweight.

 

[Kulindahr]

I don't think that works because a solid structure looping around the earth would not really be orbiting the earth, it could move in any direction relative to the earth, so it might crash into it. A space elevator works because the tension on the cable is maintained by the orbiting counterweight.

So we hang hotels for space tourists on the outside of the Hoop, just enough to keep it in place. Though it ought to stay just from being hooked to the cables.

 

[hotatlboi]

So we hang hotels for space tourists on the outside of the Hoop, just enough to keep it in place. Though it ought to stay just from being hooked to the cables.

But again, I'm not seeing why that make sense. What is going to maintain the tension in the cables to a solid loop structure?

 

[bankside]

Gack. Science fiction is one thing; let's not descend below grade C.

That was prime satire. Grade C ??!!

Sir, I demand satisfaction. A duel at dawn.

 

[Kulindahr]

But again, I'm not seeing why that make sense. What is going to maintain the tension in the cables to a solid loop structure?

The same thing that keeps the tension in them before it gets built: centripetal force.

 

[bankside]

The same thing that keeps the tension in them before it gets built: centripetal force.

Wouldn't the (hula) hoop be subject to induced currents? We could call it the Ring of Lightning.