By JOHN HEILPRIN and SETH BORENSTEIN
Associated Press
GENEVA (AP) — Scientists believe the “God particle” that might explain the underpinnings of the universe is real, and they are about to present their evidence to the world.
Physicists at the world’s biggest atom smasher plan to announce Wednesday that they have nearly confirmed the primary plank of a theory that could shape the scientific understanding of all matter.
The idea is much like gravity and Isaac Newton’s discovery: It was there all the time before Newton explained it. But now scientists know what it is and can put that knowledge to further use.
The focus of the excitement is the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle that, if confirmed, could help explain why matter has mass, which combines with gravity to give an object weight.
…
But two independent teams of physicists are cautious after decades of work and billions of dollars spent. They don’t plan to use the word “discovery.” They say they will come as close as possible to a “eureka” announcement without uttering a pronouncement as if from the scientific mountaintop.
full AP story here
Lobos Motl has more here and writes:
According to an incognito ATLAS member who spoke to Nature, they have a discovery without any doubts. Pure elation that will culminate on Wednesday morning.
A live webcast will be provided, though I expect it it will be so overloaded as to be useless:
Watch at webcast.cern.ch
Let me guess, they just need more money to do more experiments, so they can really confirm it.
Balderdash!
What spin-off effects might this give, I wonder.
“gofer says:
July 2, 2012 at 2:15 pm
I’m sorry to say, because of the global warming scheme, I hesitate to believe anything coming from “scientists” anymore. Something will be announced, to justify why they need a few more billion to confirm their suspicions and justify their existence. Distortions and prevarications, by “climate scientists”, has wrecked my once firm belief in the community.”
—————————————————————————————————————-
I have similar feelings on this. It is very difficult after the “consensus” of scientists backing a post-modern religion of AGW to trust anything coming out of the establishment. The trust has been damaged. And I spent 8 years wearing a white coat in the lab myself.
I am looking forward to reading more on this, and making up my own mind. Until then, I don’t believe anybody anymore.
Well I seem to recall, that I nearly confirmed something myself once; no I’m quite positive that I confirmed it; but I just never did write down in my note book just what it was that I had confirmed.
So if you should happen acrioss it sometime, just remember, I was the one who broke the field wide open.
This is great if it can be repeatedly confirmed.
It will greatly increase the confidence in the present model of matter.
They call it the God Particle because one researcher looking for it said “I hope we find this goddamn particle soon”. I guess they thought the public would be more accepting of the phrase The God Particle.
Sounds like there’s a competition between the US Tevatron and CERN LHC teams to claim who technically found it first. Hope the rush to announce wasn’t too premature.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/large-hadron-collider/9370677/God-Particle-rumours-strengthened-by-Tevatron-databr.html
Trivia question:
Energy and mass are essentially the same thing, gravity works on both, an increase in kinetic energy yields an apparent increase in mass, etc. Energy is to mass roughly as mass is to a black hole (a singularity), it can be thought of as highly compressed until it becomes another state.
So what does the Higgs field actually do, is it the “glue” that holds energy together as mass? Is it somehow underlying gravity, gravity is actually a secondary effect? Additional info is kindly requested.
Not to be out done by the Cern Scientists, Chicago scientists are today claiming that they have also found God.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/02/higgs-boson-evidence-god-particle
cui bono says:
July 2, 2012 at 2:29 pm
They have 4 sigmas. They need 5.
Then they are one short of a discovery, no?
“All I can say is I am very excited!”
said a Higgs field, yesterday….
“Physicists at the world’s biggest atom smasher plan to announce Wednesday that they have nearly confirmed the primary plank of a theory that could shape the scientific understanding of all matter.”
Get that?!?!?! They are going to announce that it isn’t confirmed yet but they are close apparently!!! What kind of BS announcement is that?!?!?!?!
Please distinguish particle physicists from “climate scientists”. The former Live or die on hard scientific evidence!
Uhm….”The idea is much like gravity and Isaac Newton’s discovery: It was there all the time before Newton explained it.”
As far as I’m aware neither Newton nor anybody else has ‘explained’ what gravity is.
He did indeed ‘describe’ it, and he did indeed ‘measure’ its effects and was able to ‘predict’ future outcomes on this basis. ‘Naming’ something is very different from ‘explaining’ it.
‘Identifying’ a mechanism is very different from ‘knowing’ how it works, or on a more profound level WHY it works!
Modern Science writing leaves a lot to be desired.
dogald says:
July 2, 2012 at 2:13 pm
I do wish people would stop using “God particle”
==============================================================
Yeah, I agree. John 4:24 says, “God is spirit”, outside the realm of the 5 senses. (they ain’t going to find a piece of Him.) This reminds me of insurance companies calling natural disasters “Acts of God”. There’s more than one spiritual influence in the world.
But if this helps to understand the natural world we live in, that could be a good thing. I just wish they’d find another name for it. (At least they’re not using a tree ring to find it!)
Dodgy Geezer says:
July 2, 2012 at 2:18 pm
They have produced a statistical model which explains mass!
And now they want to use it to tax people…
*
Yes, but is it our fault? 🙂
Apart from the Higgs Bosun what are they going to say about Supersymetry and the supersymmetric top quark, or stop squark?
So they kinda know it exists… kinda like we already knew it exists?…. I actually do KNOW IT EXISTS…. G*D does not require any scientis approval…. now if they would use a completely ‘other’ name for it I would be much happier, because this does nothing to unify any theory…. Matter was created but heck the scientific community needs to acknowledge the divine creator, all else is secondary…. I AM before anything else. Personally I refuse to consider that I am from extraterrestrial microbial life somehow mutating and slithering from a primordial swamp and evolving. On another line altogether, what damage has the LHC caused at the subatomic particle level to the planet we inhabit? Too many Earth changes happening. Volcano earthquake wild wealth wierd phenomina temperatures – in multiples all over the planet. NOW we do not believe it is CAGW, and we are dismissing G*D, so what is left???? Scientists playing with big toys at CERN???
James says:
July 2, 2012 at 2:55 pm
Not to be out done by the Cern Scientists, Chicago scientists are today claiming that they have also found God.
I was going to say they would have buckleys chance…… the USA has to one of the most Godless places on this planet these days……. however seeing as they are also playing with BIG TOYS, that too might help to explain all the terrible and wierd things happening with weather, climate, earth changes too. Why oh why won’t people allow God to do what God does best and stop trying ti imitate him?
I won’t believe it until someone does a survey that shows that 97% (of some) of these guys believe in the Higgs Boson. And why aren’t these guys busy dodging FOIA requests? This sounds like very shoddy science.
I take a personal as well as scientific interest in this. Back in the early days of the internet, I used HiggsBoson as my handle. Of course that was back when hardly anyone aside from physicists knew what one was theorized to be.
I wish I may. I wish I might, find a 5 sigma higgs tonight. GK
The photo is captioned:
“The CERN Large Hadron Collider seen from the air”
but I don’t think the collider can be seen from the air…
it’s underground, is it not?
The degree of pre-hype is directly negatively proportional to the degree of “nearly”.
Five Sigma for particle physics discoveries, does this mean that climate science uses
1 or 2 sigma ?
the 3-4-5 sigma thing is all rather arbitrary, 3 sigma is 99.73% sure, 4 sigma is 99.99%, 5 sigma 99.9999% sure. No sane person would be betting against this even at 2 sigma. So perhaps we can scale back the criticism?