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
@davidmhoffer
The problem isn’t the speed of light or getting enough data to the CPU, after all we are feeding all those extra cores with data. The problem is waste heat. The faster the CPU goes the more energy it needs and the more heat is generated in a given area. That heat has to be dealt with before it melts the chip and that quickly becomes very expensive. To overcome the waste heat problem we increase the chip size by adding more cores and as most problems that most computers have to solve can be broken down into separate tasks we get more work done in the same time.
This is all just a delaying action though, the heat problem has never gone away and after a certain size, the lag inside the chip will counter out any benefit from more cores. After that we will probably move to more discrete chips and CPU’s layered upon each over as the cheapest way to increase performance. Then the cheapest way will probably be to deal with the heat at which point CPU’s will get faster again.
Paul Westhaver says:
July 4, 2012 at 4:46 pm
.
“It is a step. Just like Roentgen except Roentgen did way more with way less. ”
Somethimes I wish I lived back then, when a man could do great things in his little lab, using just a few instruments….
Oh, wait! Isnt that just what Svensmark did?
George E. Smith; says: July 5, 2012 at 12:23 am
“…Admiral Grace Hopper…”
The company I worked for in 1986 organized a presentation in Palo Alto for employees with the title ‘Material Science’.
It was a three hour presentation and included Admiral Grace Hopper doing her nanosecond, microsecond, millisecond, second talk with different lengths of wire (holding an 12” gold thread at the beginning and ending with a massive (12 foot diameter) spool of copper rolling on to the stage for the millisecond, there was no prop for the second. She then got on to ion deposition channels (picoseconds) and how ‘In the future, understanding the physics of the material would be as important to you as it was to the blacksmith of old’, ‘The physics has not changed, only the scale’. They also had Richard Hart (from Next Step, the TV series) with other materials including some of the first silica aero-gels (lighter than air solid) and ultra-fine low heat reactive memory wire for opening up blocked veins and arteries. There were other presenters, it was great!
Sorry to be so off topic but her name just brought back memories of what a Science presentation is supposed to be; real, factual, demonstrable and apolitical.
I can understand why CERN did the press release before the full result is in. They knew the MSM would pick up their rather guarded statement that, after much massaging of the data up to the sigma 5 level, the Higgs particle has at last been found.
However, behind the scenes they still need to need to resolve the issue that the particle they found is only 125 GeV, while the Higgs particle needed to fully support the current Standard Model should sit somewhere between 135 GeV and 800 GeV.
So have they found THE Higgs or something else? Time for the theoretical physicists to fire up their Monte Carlo machines again to see if their prediction matches reality or if the 125GeV particle will cause too many issues for the current SM…
Time to get out a bucket of popcorn, a long drink, then sit back and watch the fun!
Here is the question, if this is a Higgs, and thus substantially validates the standard model, what does this mean about the nonstandard models? What does it mean about all those various flavors of string theory, such as M-theory etc? If the standard model is shown true (or at least truer), does that mean that string theorie(s) are shown false, or possibly false, or just less likely?
When I look at string theory, I look with extreme skepticism. I notice that it has zip zilch zero nada experimental evidence to back it up. In fact, it was only recently that one flavor of it could even be tested with observation or experiment, and was found to be false, the rest so far cannot even be tested. I also notice that the main reason people like Stephen Hawking are so pro M-theory is because they believe that otherwise there might be a God, based on what they know about the big bang (or think they know). Basically, they have the choice between God or M-theory, they choose M-theory because they hate God. It thus looks like string theory, especially M-theory, may simply be there for religious, or anti-religious (same thing) reasons.
BTW, there is the idea that M-theory cannot be falsified, and is therefore not science. This was countered by the idea that it could be tested with a certain type of collider, smash stuff at certain energies, look for stuff that then disappears out of this universe and slips into another universe. It is thus suggested that it can be tested and thus counts as science. A few wee problems. First, you need a collider 180,000 miles in diameter, not possible, thus not testable. Second, it depends entirely on negative evidence, one could get that simply by failing to detect some particles in a collision, say because it produced a bunch of neutrinos, or a WIMP or other hard to detect particle, or simply because of a failure for any reason to detect something, such as faulty equipment or slipshod work or outside interference (such as from cosmic rays or neutrinos). With negative evidence so easy to produce and with (anti) religious reasons to produce it, no such ‘evidence” could be trusted.
Meanwhile, there is a wee little problem with knowing about the big bang, and that is that it can be hard to test. I have a theory about how it happened. My theory is correct. I know that if I do X, the universe will explode. I want to prove my theory is correct to everyone. I do X…
Alexander Feht says: July 5, 2012 at 12:31 am
Artificial Intelligence will not exist until after they create Artificial Motivation.
There is nothing that has been found to motivate a computer. Until they come up with starving, suffocating or horny chip and some kind of a feedback system they will never get to even to most basic actual thinking.
Until then all they will have is an ‘intelligence’ that simply repeats what it has been told is true, a mainstream Climate Science journalist algorithm, at best.
Seems I made a small mistake on my earlier post. Just found this at http://www.thunderbolts.info.
The concentrating and centralizing of funding and research since the establishment of NASA and its sister agencies have resulted in a flood of discoveries. However, it has also resulted in the establishment of a monopolistic consensus that has driven out research into alternative hypotheses. The poster boy for this disturbing consequence is Halton Arp, who was denied telescope time in 1983 to pursue evidence of intrinsic redshift.
Experiments to refine the concepts of alternative hypotheses are unlikely to be done as long as the would-be investigators are exiles. They dig for spare minutes between the cushions of earning a living from other pursuits, and the few temporal coins they find are spent on conceptual outlines. Nothing is left for desperately needed experiments.
The once-proud Queen of the Sciences now offers herself for sale to the highest bidder on her street corner. The field of astronomy is no longer a seminar of science but a battlefield between mercenaries and exiles.
There may be other explanations for what we see around us but it appears the same problem identified in climate science is rampant in other branches.
“I have to wonder though [if it] wasn’t a final dig at the legacy of the failed US effort with the superconducting supercollider”
Awww…don’t get me started on how our currently drownding in debt govt. reniged on funding for the SSC because it would “cost too much”. Granted, it was back in the early 90’s…but still.
Jeff
If it is true then they should seek for the Higgs Boson within the Higgs Boson…..
There is no need to spend such a lot of Euros while there is people starving in Europe. Wanna know reality?, just look around. This is neither a joke nor a sarcasm, it is literally true.
Higgs Field/Bosun, is like a Californian socialist Govt; it’s existence produces so many bottleneck headwiinds of inefficiency that it slows down everything so much that it can send a bosun out to tax it’s butt !!!!
Only 4% of the universe is made of known material so perhaps with this discovery we can nudge that up to around 4 and a 1/2%. What this really means is that they don’t have a clue…. but they are closer to having more of a clue than before the experiment. Sort of less clueless than mostly clueless. Bit steep at $15 Billion or so per 1/2 a percent. As an example, So for instance, in literary circles; the difference between knowing 4% and 4 1/2% of Shakespeare has not been defined
Quote:
The Higgs Field permiates the whole universe……
Sorry, but is this not just the much-derided Aether re-invented?
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“Understanding the very basics of the physics of the Universe is exciting, but does it have any practical payoff? In medicene, electronics, transportation, will there be any pay off?”
This is an ignorant comment. People can’t say what the payoff is yet, because its new knowledge and it will take a long time for someone to figure out practical applications if there are any, and it may take large amounts of energy for practical applications. But the entire modern world is basically built on the theoretical physics of the past, whether its electromagnetism, carnot engines or quantum mechanics leading to semiconductors.
“Sorry, but is this not just the much-derided Aether re-invented?”
Sorry, Ralph, but its not the “aether”. Can’t be used as a reference frame. Plus experiment shows the aether does not exist, experiment shows the Higgs does exist.
George E Smith’
Comment was getting long enough as it was, but yes, it was Rear Admiral Grace Hopper. 5 foot nothing, scary as h*ll.
NoJoe;
There are multiple problems, including waste heat. But we can solve the waste heat problem, we already have actually just the really high end ones aren’t economical yet. But the speed of light we cannot solve and that is THE limiting factor. Many people THINK they are feeding their cpu’s “fast enough” and most aren’t. The cpu is twiddling itz thumbs.
Andrew30;
I saw her do the same presentation in Boston. Afterward we hung around and she told a few more war stories, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff ordering her to destroy all the work she did on compilers in other languages so that only the English ones remained, ensuring that the West had a huge leap on the Russians and Chinese during the cold war because they couldn’t program in their native tongue, they had to learn English first. And that was only one of many stories. Fascinating when you start understanding just how much of the computer industry as we know it today was built on the foundation she set down.
anna v said:
“It is part of the human group makeup and this is a group of highly educated and intelligent people yoked together for a common goal.”
“I myself worked on part of this from 1997 to 2001”
“This is group work of the order of building pyramids or Parthenons”
I said: “and only an arrogant self aggrandizing fool would believe that this is the ultimate accomplishment of science.”
Anna V I think with all your own back patting, assertions of self-superior intelligence, lack of modesty, you had better leave it to others to be the judge as to what is on the order of building the pyramids.
Folks this is what happened to climate science. The climate priests were so busy telling we small creature how dumb we were and how smart they were they forgot what science was all about. Here we go again. So anna v , since you elected yourself spokesperson of the science elite, remind us again how brilliant you are.
The God Particle walks into a Catholic Church. The priest says, “What are you doing here?” The Particle says, “Without me, there would be no mass.”
For John Coleman:
First and foremost, they will be asking for more money–a lot more. There are probably a lot more ways to parse symmetries than there is money.
From one physical scientist’s perspective (yours truly), our ‘what’ understanding of the universe will take on a more fine-grained appearance–maybe an interim view as suggested in Charles Nelson’s comment above. If I were doing a story on the meaning of it one facet I would look at is what are the currently perceived implications of going to higher and higher energies? Is it a desert? Are there hints that something else may be out there (at higher energies)? How does one know when an end has been reached? How much light is the ultimate characterization from the PR reported experiment going to shed on these matters?
I am not so sure if this has much to do with ‘why things are as they are’. I have always considered particle physics to be an application of a quantum theory and not the essential theory. Particle attributes or intimated connected with the rules of the why, i.e., symmetries. Why these rules have expression in our universe is another, deeper question.
Go to your local physics department and talk to the particle physicist, but for a possibly different perspective also see if you can dig up a physics and/or philosophy professor who is more directed at the foundations of quantum theory.
Sorry. Read
“Particle attributes or intimated connected with the rules…” as “Particle attributes or intimated connectIONS with the rules
The Higgs particle is 130 times the mass of a proton, which makes it as massive as a fair sized atom.
It is supposed to be so elusive because it is so short-lived, existing for the tiniest fraction of a second. But yet it must be superabundant if it to provide the universal slurry that causes inertia and hence mass.
Therefore it must be created at least as fast as it is being destroyed, at phenomenal rates.
Why then can it not be detected during creation, and in the process tap into the energy used during the process, rather than by using huge amounts of energy to smash protons and look for its signals in the debris?
Also if we know its properties then maybe we can manipulate it to shield matter against it and create weightlessness, or anti-gravity shields?
Paul Westhaver says:
July 5, 2012 at 9:42 am
So anna v , since you elected yourself spokesperson of the science elite, remind us again how brilliant you are.
You just displayed a huge chip on your shoulder.
Looks like my offhanded prediction of a variety of Higg’s Bosons is on track (geddit?) with discussion already including ‘what type of Higg’s it is’. Yeah…soon we will find there are Higglets and Top Higgs and Charmed Higgs and higgledy-piggeldy Higgs.
God particle? By definition, all particles are God’s particles. Isn’t that how it works?
@John Coleman
The best hope we have is if the experiments prove that the Standard Model is incorrect and that the assumptions about the Big Bang Theory/Cosmological expansion fall apart. Most great achievements occur during scientific revolutions where the old is thrown own for a completely new perspective. One has to then wonder why do we spend so much money to prop up existing paradigms rather than to challenge them? Isn’t the GWA movement suffering from the same ill fate?
@xham
that is why we spend billions testing predictions of the theories. As Einstein astutely observed:”…a single experiment can prove me wrong” It is when we test the predictions of a theory and find it does not hold that we get interesting results. Of course the Chinese have a curse that goes something like this: “May you live in interesting times!”
This stuff is way beyond my physics expertise — I’m not competent to hold an opinion on its accuracy or importance. I will just observe one thing. In my recollection, over the past 30 years or so, **major scientific breakthroughs reported in the mainstream media turn out to be wrong in approximately 100% of cases**.
With that in mind, I await the opinions of the better informed.
anna v,
It seems to me that Paul W has been a bit harsh. I don’t see any justification for that from any of your positive comments you left here. You have my support, anyway.