From CERN, another science press release with a “could” and “preliminary” caveat. Sigh. I expected fireworks. It is encouraging though. 5 sigma isn’t anything to sneeze at.
I have to wonder though, if the fact that CERN delayed this press release (from Monday when it became known) to today, the 4th of July, wasn’t a final dig at the legacy of the failed US effort with the superconducting supercollider. They write at the CERN page:
Higgs within reach
Our understanding of the universe is about to change…
The ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN today presented their latest results in the search for the long-sought Higgs boson. Both experiments see strong indications for the presence of a new particle, which could be the Higgs boson, in the mass region around 126 gigaelectronvolts (GeV).
The experiments found hints of the new particle by analysing trillions of proton-proton collisions from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2011 and 2012. The Standard Model of particle physics predicts that a Higgs boson would decay into different particles – which the LHC experiments then detect.
Both ATLAS and CMS gave the level of significance of the result as 5 sigma on the scale that particle physicists use to describe the certainty of a discovery.
One sigma means the results could be random fluctuations in the data, 3 sigma counts as an observation and a 5-sigma result is a discovery. The results presented today are preliminary, as the data from 2012 is still under analysis. The complete analysis is expected to be published around the end of July.
The press release:
CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson
Geneva, 4 July 2012. At a seminar held at CERN1 today as a curtain raiser to the year’s major particle physics conference, ICHEP2012 in Melbourne, the ATLAS and CMS experiments presented their latest preliminary results in the search for the long sought Higgs particle. Both experiments observe a new particle in the mass region around 125-126 GeV.
“We observe in our data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of 5 sigma, in the mass region around 126 GeV. The outstanding performance of the LHC and ATLAS and the huge efforts of many people have brought us to this exciting stage,” said ATLAS experiment spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti, “but a little more time is needed to prepare these results for publication.”
“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.”
“It’s hard not to get excited by these results,” said CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci. “ We stated last year that in 2012 we would either find a new Higgs-like particle or exclude the existence of the Standard Model Higgs. With all the necessary caution, it looks to me that we are at a branching point: the observation of this new particle indicates the path for the future towards a more detailed understanding of what we’re seeing in the data.”
The results presented today are labelled preliminary. They are based on data collected in 2011 and 2012, with the 2012 data still under analysis. Publication of the analyses shown today is expected around the end of July. A more complete picture of today’s observations will emerge later this year after the LHC provides the experiments with more data.
The next step will be to determine the precise nature of the particle and its significance for our understanding of the universe. Are its properties as expected for the long-sought Higgs boson, the final missing ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics? Or is it something more exotic? The Standard Model describes the fundamental particles from which we, and every visible thing in the universe, are made, and the forces acting between them. All the matter that we can see, however, appears to be no more than about 4% of the total. A more exotic version of the Higgs particle could be a bridge to understanding the 96% of the universe that remains obscure.
“We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle’s properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe.”
Positive identification of the new particle’s characteristics will take considerable time and data. But whatever form the Higgs particle takes, our knowledge of the fundamental structure of matter is about to take a major step forward.
Contact:
CERN press office, press.office@cern.ch
+41 22 767 34 32
+41 22 767 21 41
Further information:
UPDATE: My friend John Coleman at KUSI-TV in San Diego has produced an interesting video report based on input from the WUWT thread. Watch it here
Climategate has spoiled this moment somewhat. I want to believe, but these days science is a publically funded, globetrotting strawberry social. As an engineer, I would knock it down a couple of sigma just because the two teams together have 5000 physicists on the payroll (they’ve got to say something for the cash burned up and to come), more than 100 times as many as those who discovered anything of significance in the last 500 years. The rest of the model was put together by about half a dozen self funded individuals using candlelight, crow quill pens, logarithms, long division and elegant brassy instruments with screw posts for wires. They had a penchant for itchy tweeds instead of white labcoat uniforms that really identify technologists.
The science is starved for something new. Dark matter and strings are what happen when you get such a long drought in a science’s productivity. You also get excursions into global warming and purloining of what is properly engineering (there are no rocket scientists folks). As you can see, I’m going for Skeptic of the Year.
Vince Causey says:
July 4, 2012 at 2:05 pm
“So confirming something that you suspected to be true 50 years ago, moves physics into greater understanding, exactly how?”
It directs effort and resources away from theories which will not bear fruit to those which may.
“US effort with the superconducting supercollider”
TIME magazine called it the “$5.3 billion GIZMO” and I cancelled my subscription.
“””””Tim says:
July 4, 2012 at 12:00 pm
John Coleman says:
“I ask for help from the smarter-than-me readers of WUWT. Thanks”
I think you are asking for the moon. You have to take it on faith that all science progress eventually has benefits for mankind, if used intelligently and correctly. It also, because of politics and the inherent evil and greed of many men and women, can be used to mankind’s detriment.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
One classic example is the Laser. When discovered no one could think of a use for it but now clothes and decorative greetings cards are cut out with them along with a multitude of other uses. That doesn’t stop the armed forces using them as weapons or stupid youths trying to blind plane pilots with them <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Can YOU cite a reference for that statement Tim ?? Long before there was a LASER, there was the MASER; Microwave AMPLIFICATION by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, which was a very useful coherent microwave amplifier. As result, of its usefulness, there was a very competitive and active SEARCH for a method for applying the methodology at Optical frequencies; not for disco bar amusement, but for increased bandwidth communications. The search was largely unsuccessful; lasers didn't simply fall off the back of a turnip truck, in fact initially they didn;t happen at all; the conditions required were too stringent.
Instead, what did happen was the LOSER. Light OSCILLATION by stimulated emission of radiation. Yes a useful source of coherent waves at optical frequencies, but only coherent over centimetres to maybe a few metres, but a rather unstable system not capable of actually amplifying coherently, a small optical frequency signal.
So the laser (misnamed) was the result of an active search; much as the top quark and now maybe to 4.9 sigmas, the Higgs.
Today we do have light amplifiers, and they were NOT a solution in search of a problem.
High energy particle physics now appear to have more in common with our Supreme Court and Emanations from the Penumbra!!
When wsbriggs [@ur momisugly July 4, 2012 at 11:35 am] says, “… the equations involve Legendre polynomials which show various possible spherical resonances. Since we’re playing with resonances in space-time …”, I suddenly realize what we are really dealing with here is a ‘mathematical illusion’ or, dare I say it, a ‘computer model’ of ‘reality’.
“Space” can be perfectly represented (mathematically) by 3 dimensions; “x, y & z”. But “Time” is a different type of concept entirely; an ‘apple’, if you will, to Space’s ‘cat’.
While it is perfectly possible to ADD the Number of apples and the Number of cats in a room to obtain the total Number of “cat-apples”, there is no benefit to be derived in believing that a “cat-apple” is a delicious or cuddly new natural product. The number represents no recognizable thing, other than a mathematical concept, one step removed from sensible reality – an ‘abstraction’ called “total-number”.
It is certainly possible to write a mathematical equation involving ‘x, y, z & t’, and the result may well tell us something about “cat-apples”, but are we any the wiser for this ‘knowledge’.
Think about it.
This is no better than a ‘computer model’ of an atmosphere which includes no analogue of ‘clouds’?
The analogue of the ‘missing clouds’ in the current physical model of the universe is the ‘aether’. Einstein knew this but could not understand what it could be like. I believe Dr Harold Aspden [RIP] did understand. See his published works here.
A Higgs Boson goes into a church. The priest says “We don’t allow Bosons in here”. ”Ah” says the Higgs “If I’m not here, you can’t have Mass.”
Sorry, from http://www.atangledweb.org/?p=33377. It’s so bad it’s good!
Ah, I see now!
So Climate Scientology is still about the 1 sigma, then…?
Tim says:
July 4, 2012 at 12:00 pm
And communications, surely? Come on, this interwebby thingy pretty much runs on optical fibre comms these days, and these use Lasers.
Where did the Higgs come from?
Remarkable similarities between computer models of Earth’s climate, the cosmos, the nucleus, the Sun and the cosmos indicate that “The love of theory and money became the root of evil” for scientists after 1945.: http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-418
Curiousgeorge says:
July 4, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Yes, this has been my very basic understanding of the technology we may be able to leverage from this. Basically, if we work out how mas is ‘created’ and how gravity works, it gives us the possibility of controlling it.
It’s a long way, but it was a long way from E=MC^2 to things going ‘bang’ in a very large way (and nuclear power). I would expect a similar timescale, but then again technology is always accelerating. If we can prevent a decay of technology back to the middle ages, we might be OK…..
One amusing aside is that if this is possible (and if it is, I think someone will figure out a way), then the Space Elevator becomes irrelevant. I can see a half-built SE left floating a a testament to the folly of investing in existing technology when new technology is emerging. But maybe that is just me being cynical.
Who wrote this cr@p! And I don’t mean Crop! So, it’s a discovery, at the 5 sigma level… they think! They think!? They will tell us more at the end of the month!? After more data? Then it’s not a discovery, right!? Ugh?
Anyone know the politics behind this exasperating announcement?
A response to Mr. Coleman:
You ask: “Understanding the very basics of the physics of the Universe is exciting, but does it have any practical payoff?”
Other people here have given you essentially two classes of answer, both, I think, reasonable:
1 – that progress in basic physics always has had unexpected, but positive, consequences for engineered product development; and,
2 – that confirmation of the existence and effect of the Higgs/Anderson field opens some highly speculative avenues – including several that could lead to FTL and other future technologies dependent on the ability to nullify the field – for future research.
In addition, however, I’d like to suggest several other consequences:
1 – confirmation will shut down research based on alternatives which do not allow for the higgs and thus free money and talent for other efforts.
2 – what we seem to have is conditional, highly caveated, confirmation that almost, but not quite, fits the current standard model. Those deviations, especially those noted by the fermi labs people, may be the most important results here – ultimately allowing somebody somewhere to break the mental logjams physics has faced since pretty much the late 1930s.
I confidently predict that within the next fifty years scientists will use a high energy collider to shatter the Higgs Boson into it’s component particles.
If it takes tremendous (Big Bang-like energy) to produce a Higgs boson, and it instantly decays, does that mean there are presently no Higgs bosons left? Is it just the remaining Higgs field that exists now?
From George E. Smith on July 4, 2012 at 2:19 pm:
Given the state of the economies that support CERN, the initial costs of building the LHC and of fixing it after the earlier blowup, with no guarantee it won’t happen again, expected future costs, and that the old US Tevatron essentially also found the same at a much cheaper cost except to a lower confidence interval, the message is more “It wasn’t a huge waste of money!”
Remember the old line, whenever someone understands the universe it will be immediately replaced with one that’s more bizarre. Every time the theorists get close, are certain they have it, they find the quirk, the discrepancy, the exception, that leads to a “new understanding” where What Was Known is expanded into one specific case of something far grander and much more complex.
That’s the nature of this reality, this trap, which is itself only one of a potentially infinite number of realities, each with their own rules and physical constants. With all of them as part of something larger, which will require even grander theories to comprehend. Etc. Oh well, at least we all have one method of seeing for ourselves if there really is something greater than what we’ve perceived and have theorized about, that we’ll all use someday.
Scary question John! Others here have posted relevant information.
Practical payout? You mean instant gratification? Play down that aspect if at all possible. Our understanding of the inner workings of the atom’s particles is roughly equivalent to the early workings of chemistry as it evolved definitively from alchemy. As Newton (and others) knew there must be something more, still he was forced to use the tools available at his time.
There is a distinct advantage now though. Instead of scientists just suspecting more, the do know more; the tools are not current to their knowledge so they are working on the tools. Once the tools work (for example, definitive Higgs-Bosun information) then true progress can begin. That is, until the next major obstacle is met.
Remember, it took millenia for mankind to work out how to use the power from steam. It has only been decades since Einstein’s e=MC2 paper and fewer decades have passed since Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation was postulated. The greater the barrier to overcome, the greater the reward, hopefully.
John Coleman says:
July 4, 2012 at 11:02 am
does it have any practical payoff?
It may be taxed some day, heavily.
Yep, it’s interesting but I’m somewhat reminded of this all-time favorite hit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdcYiAXKR58
*waits with the celebratory frying pan in anticipation*
The God particle… a term of a borrowed ladder.
So why the term “God” particle, especially CAPITALIZED, as if it is a proper noun?
If you want to make something sound important, you give it an important name!!! I find it deliciously amusing and ironic that a collection of godless scientists would steal the name of the Creator to lend credibility to an otherwise modest step in the progression of scientific understanding of how things work. Really folks… it ain’t that big a deal.
This is exactly what happens when socialist governments fund “big science” projects. CERN Hadron collider is a big expensive tool that cost a fortune. How do you justify that? You can’t. So you have to use hyperbole.
The UN… did the exact same thing with Global Warming. They pumped unspeakable amounts of money into a money redistribution scheme and created a mutual self-stimulation orgy of sycophant “scientists” to worship the creation of this new god…global warming. Look what it turned into.
Pleaaaase people…. the Higgs Boson is the name. Ok…. it is there. Big Wow. It isn’t THE God particle. There will be more particles and only an arrogant self aggrandizing fool would believe that this is the ultimate accomplishment of science.
It is a step. Just like Roentgen except Roentgen did way more with way less.
I refuse to get on the “god particle” band wagon and reach my hand in to massage the muscles of the CERN mega-project priests. They think it is a big deal… They need us tho think that too to keep the money flowing in the midst of the collapse of the world economies.
You wouldn’t want to let “God” down now would you? Open you wallets and pay the CERN priests.
Scientists have to learn to speak accurately and modestly about their work. This announcement is neither accurate nor modest.
So take that with a lead balloon draped in a wet blanket.
The Higgs boson (if it exists) would be important as a virtual particle. Such particles have an effect even though they don’t ‘exist’.
Paul Westhaver says:
The God particle… a term of a borrowed ladder.
So why the term “God” particle, especially CAPITALIZED, as if it is a proper noun?
(I don’t know exactly how to do quoting properly here)
That’s the term used because that’s the title of a popular book about the particle. According to the Guardian, which while unreliable about anything politicized may be okay for non-politicized details, the original title was “The Goddamn Particle”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jun/30/higgs.boson.cern
The name was chosen to market something, but it was the book, not the research.
Does anyone else thing that fundamental particles should be easier to find?
@Josualdo
Very observant! Also appropriate to go with the various other comments about a God particle.