Particles - higgs boson

[Niri Te]

Very interesting, Niri Te


Irayo for sharing it



But I am a little sceptical if the Higgs Boson really exist

IF it DOES, that would tie everything in together.
Niri Te

[Seze Mune]

It is so strange to think that the particle which is supposed to create mass is so elusive (although it's everywhere around us, kefyak?) that it's taken more than 40 years to close in on it and we're STILL not there.

There is something so intuitively bassakwards about that.

[Tsyal Maktoyu]

Indeed, it exists around us in virtual form (due to the uncertainty of space time, particles can pop into and out of existence within a system). Unfortunately, because we are only capable of measurement from without quantum systems, we can not directly measure these virtual particles (because of their "borrowed time" nature, they can only interact from WITHIN the system). Really, the only force that exists in real form (can exit the system and be measured directly) at energies we encounter everyday is the photon. That's why we need high energy colliders: to simulate the moments after the Big Bang, when all the fermions and bosons of the Standard Model (including likely the inverses of every boson: antimatter, mirror matter, supersymettric matter, etc) existed in their real forms, before interacting, decaying, innihilating, and forming the universe as we know it today.

[Vur’evenge]

This is a subject of some discussion in my consciousness meditation group.  From the mystical-quantum community it is surmised that there is no "bottom", for lack of a better word.  No master-control particle (MCP hrh), "end" or "God particle"... just more of something that human beings will call such a particle... nothing detectable or quantifiable that causes matter to "be"...   and that it is "just elephants all the way down". I know that notion is not happy-making for many people.

All that blathered, the hunt for "it" provides many with "infinite" entertainment   

[Seze Mune]

IMHO, this kind of science is the metaphorical search for God from the outside in, rather than from the inside out.  It is head tripping to watch how scientists particle-ize reality while at the same time trying to find the field which unifies it all and creates a whole cloth out of it.

Particle or cloth.  Or another kind of gestalt entirely?

I enjoy the hunt.

[Niri Te]

 I study Astronomy and Physics, NOT to "prove" that GOD exists, me Seze, but to try and learn HOW He did what HE did.
Niri Te

[Seze Mune]

I study Astronomy and Physics, NOT to "prove" that GOD exists, me Seze, but to try and learn HOW He did what HE did.
Niri Te

Thank you, ma Niri.  That is exactly what I meant, although I guess I wasn't being very clear.   Someone once discussed how crazy it is for scientists to take apart living creatures to find out what made them live.  You just can't do that.  When it comes to machines, perhaps it is easier to understand the mechanics and create new functionality.  But when it comes to living organisms and understanding what LIFE is, particle-izing life won't get us closer to understanding it.

All scientists use one basic tool they don't understand.  It is absolutely fundamental to science and yet they have no understanding of what it is.  It's called consciousness and we all have it to some degree.  Yet there is no science which deals with it adequately, and no mathematical formula which can ever describe it in toto.  Probably not even in part.  I think if we want to understand the universe and how and why things were created, we'd be better off first exploring our own consciousness rather than going out into theoretical particle-ising.  What is the value of learning so much about particles that we can create better weapons of mass destruction.  It seems the better choice would be to find out more about ourselves first rather than what's 'out there'. Just my 2 cents.  Everyone's mileage may vary on this.

[Tsyal Maktoyu]

FYI they don't call it the "God particle" because it's somehow the "master boson" or something (all known bosons are equally important for the function of the universe). It got its name because the search became frustrating to the point where people began calling it the "god damn particle," and the truncated name sounded mystical and esoteric.

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

I study Astronomy and Physics, NOT to "prove" that GOD exists, me Seze, but to try and learn HOW He did what HE did.
Niri Te

Thank you, ma Niri.  That is exactly what I meant, although I guess I wasn't being very clear.   Someone once discussed how crazy it is for scientists to take apart living creatures to find out what made them live.  You just can't do that.  When it comes to machines, perhaps it is easier to understand the mechanics and create new functionality.  But when it comes to living organisms and understanding what LIFE is, particle-izing life won't get us closer to understanding it.

Compared to taking matter apart, taking plants and animals apart to see how they work is a walk in the park. Even the biochemical reactions are getting to be well understood. Much good comes out of this research. And yet, I think science is going to reach a point where they will not be able to proceed past in understanding life. When we reach this point, we have reached the 'interface' between the physical and spiritual world. I also believe that we will never be able to create a lifeform that is 'truly alive', yet it will do most of what a real living thing can do.

We can 'see' much of what goes on in life. And we have characterized much of it in the process. The thing is, living things are fantastically complicated. Understanding how all the pieces fit together is now the big area of research.

Matter, on the other hand, is incredibly small, and at the same time, requires incredibly high energy levels to 'disassemble' it. The smallest things we study in living things is several orders of magnitude larger.

All scientists use one basic tool they don't understand.  It is absolutely fundamental to science and yet they have no understanding of what it is.  It's called consciousness and we all have it to some degree.  Yet there is no science which deals with it adequately, and no mathematical formula which can ever describe it in toto.  Probably not even in part.  I think if we want to understand the universe and how and why things were created, we'd be better off first exploring our own consciousness rather than going out into theoretical particle-ising.  What is the value of learning so much about particles that we can create better weapons of mass destruction.  It seems the better choice would be to find out more about ourselves first rather than what's 'out there'. Just my 2 cents.  Everyone's mileage may vary on this.

I try and disassociate morality, ethics and politics from this kind of science. Besides being very wishy-washy, it complicates clear understanding of what is really going on. We were never intended to create a new societial order from the structure of an atom, for instance. Physics, especially the strange world of theoretical and quantum physics are 'beautiful just as they are', and can be fully appreciated without all the other philosophical baggage. And yet, I think that understanding these things, as Niri Te points out, draws us closer to God.

In the end, as Seze points out, I would not be surprised if the key to understanding how quantum physics really works is quite different-- and much simpler-- than we make it out to be with our complex theories. It is like the old belief that the earth was the center of the universe. Lots of interesting theories were developed to explain the oddities of planetary motion, for instance. Religion and philosophy, unfortunately, gave us disincentives to really understand what was happening. But once we did, it was all relatively simple.

It would not surprise me to find out  that all these teeny particles are actually large complex machines, created by the trillions by some advanced race (or God, as I would see it), and that everything that we know is just complex assembleges of these machines. We are so big compared to these 'functional parts', that we don't realize these 'parts' are large to those who built them.

[Seze Mune]

Compared to taking matter apart, taking plants and animals apart to see how they work is a walk in the park. Even the biochemical reactions are getting to be well understood. Much good comes out of this research. And yet, I think science is going to reach a point where they will not be able to proceed past in understanding life. When we reach this point, we have reached the 'interface' between the physical and spiritual world. I also believe that we will never be able to create a lifeform that is 'truly alive', yet it will do most of what a real living thing can do.

We can 'see' much of what goes on in life. And we have characterized much of it in the process. The thing is, living things are fantastically complicated. Understanding how all the pieces fit together is now the big area of research.

Matter, on the other hand, is incredibly small, and at the same time, requires incredibly high energy levels to 'disassemble' it. The smallest things we study in living things is several orders of magnitude larger.

This is just my hypothesis, granted, but I think the physical and spiritual worlds are inextricably linked.  One is the counterpart of the other, in certain terms.  In other terms, you could say that the physical channels the spiritual.  

So as I perceive it, to look at one without the other is to ignore the interface and miss the meaning...perhaps even the entire point.  You can take a human being apart and parse him down to the smallest atomic unit, but you still haven't come any closer to understanding who and what he is, and how the systems within him interact...how and why he dreams, how the dreams affect the physical functioning of his body, how the body interprets quantum processes, etc.  

If one is looking for what started it all and one postulates the Big Bang, one is still left with the question of what precipitated the Big Bang.  I don't think I've seen any science approach that.  

Now: if what you want is cleancut, clear, beautiful and predictable, then looking at things mechanically is your best choice.  But even then, you can run into the hot, messiness and unpredictability behind it:  for example, we keep making progress on understanding the human genome if by that you mean being able to attach labels to its bits and pieces.  BUT we've discovered epigenetics and transposons which trigger unexpected processes and we don't know exactly how they work or why.  It is very likely that epigenetic triggers in humans can be as simple (and as complex!) as thought, about which we know next to nothing.  So where do you go, mechanically, with that?  We've never even been able to point to a thought in a human brain, yet we all know they exist!  And if you go in that direction, you get closer to the spiritual side as humans create thoughts and assign arbitrary meanings. And there you're off into the so-called soft sciences...

All scientists use one basic tool they don't understand.  It is absolutely fundamental to science and yet they have no understanding of what it is.  It's called consciousness and we all have it to some degree.  Yet there is no science which deals with it adequately, and no mathematical formula which can ever describe it in toto.  Probably not even in part.  I think if we want to understand the universe and how and why things were created, we'd be better off first exploring our own consciousness rather than going out into theoretical particle-ising.  What is the value of learning so much about particles that we can create better weapons of mass destruction.  It seems the better choice would be to find out more about ourselves first rather than what's 'out there'. Just my 2 cents.  Everyone's mileage may vary on this.

I try and disassociate morality, ethics and politics from this kind of science. Besides being very wishy-washy, it complicates clear understanding of what is really going on. We were never intended to create a new societal order from the structure of an atom, for instance. Physics, especially the strange world of theoretical and quantum physics are 'beautiful just as they are', and can be fully appreciated without all the other philosophical baggage. And yet, I think that understanding these things, as Niri Te points out, draws us closer to God.

For a few, I think this may be true.  Or let me put my tongue firmly in my cheek and say that the uses to which the understanding of the atom has been put, has certainly drawn a LOT of people suddenly and unexpectedly closer to God.  There are still shadows of those people on certain steps in Hiroshima.  I am not sure how morality and ethics can be divorced from this, and if this sort of event had no effect on world societies...it would be incredibly disheartening.  It is just my own opinion, of course, but the effect of scientific discoveries cannot be truly fully appreciated without keeping this in mind.

Remember the Manhattan Project?  A large number of scientists behind that deeply regretted it when they considered the moral and philosophical implications:

"Sixty years ago this summer, 155 scientists working on the Manhattan Project to design and build the world's first A-bombs signed a petition to President Truman raising grave moral doubts about what they had created.

"Led by physicist Leo Szilard, the signers at the Project's secret uranium plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and at the Metallurgical Lab in Chicago, urged their Commander-in-Chief to weigh his "moral responsibilities" when deciding whether to drop A-bombs on inhabited Japanese cities. They also urged Truman to warn the Japanese about the apocalyptic ruin they faced, and to state clearly the surrender terms that Washington now expected from Tokyo.

"The petition's signers had all worked doggedly to create nuclear weapons before Nazi scientists could. But they saw this as a desperate, defensive effort to keep Hitler from world domination. Once Germany surrendered in May 1945, they considered offensive use of their new weapons against Japan as both morally wrong and potentially catastrophic. Instead, many signers urged the A-bomb be demonstrated to force Japan's surrender, and then be locked under new international controls to forestall a post-war nuclear arms race.

"More Manhattan Project scientists would have signed at Los Alamos, the secret lab in New Mexico where the bomb was designed and assembled, but there director J. Robert Oppenheimer forbade the petition's circulation. Oppenheimer had advised a top-level government committee that recommended Truman use the bomb without warning on civilians, and he dismissed Szilard's petition as naive meddling. Going further, Oppenheimer alerted Gen. Leslie Groves, the Manhattan Project's military head, about the petition. Only after learning how Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed did Oppenheimer regret his creation, urge international control for all atomic work, and oppose racing to build even more powerful H-bombs.  More of the story:    "The Scientists' Petition:" A Forgotten Wartime Protest

So, I don't think the implications of science should be ignored.  I think it's especially ironic to ignore the soft sciences when after all, the use made of the work of the hard scientists will be totally dependent on the thought processes involved with the soft sciences, as in using weapons of mass destruction on each other.

On the other hand,  a friend of mine is a professor who does pure research on frogs' sense of smell and hasn't the slightest concern about the use to which his research could be put.  Frog noses probably won't lead to human deaths or great societal changes.

In the end, as Seze points out, I would not be surprised if the key to understanding how quantum physics really works is quite different-- and much simpler-- than we make it out to be with our complex theories. It is like the old belief that the earth was the center of the universe. Lots of interesting theories were developed to explain the oddities of planetary motion, for instance. Religion and philosophy, unfortunately, gave us disincentives to really understand what was happening. But once we did, it was all relatively simple.

It would not surprise me to find out  that all these teeny particles are actually large complex machines, created by the trillions by some advanced race (or God, as I would see it), and that everything that we know is just complex assemblages of these machines. We are so big compared to these 'functional parts', that we don't realize these 'parts' are large to those who built them.

My own half-baked theory involves gestalts, physical, psychological and spiritual.  It's obvious that all matter is a series of gestalts.  I go so far as to postulate that there is some sort of intelligent awareness within a cell which controls its function the way your brain and mine have some control over our functions.  In humans, this is done on multiple levels. Our egos are aware of deciding to get up off the chair, but our egos are not aware of the mechanics it takes to achieve that action.  Yet there is an interface between thought processes and physical processes, and to a much lesser degree I think this could be true for organs and cells (you might want to read Bruce Lipton's The biology of belief which proposes the cell's membrane and not its nucleus is the 'brain' of the cell).  Anyway, I think it possible that human consciousness is to other consciousnesses what cells are to organs and we wouldn't be any more aware of our participation in that gestalt than the cell is aware of being part of a human.  

It's fun to think about; I would never want to insist that I know THE TRUTH.  As soon as that happens, you know someone has completely lost it because no human being could ever completely understand God - whatever that truly is.

[Tsyal Maktoyu]

If everyone's on the topic of their own theories, I might as well throw my hat into the ring. It's a sort of quasi-string theory involving brane worlds that I got the idea of when I saw a paddle ball at a store once. String theories today rely on either open or closed string, that can only interact with two points (unless I missed something somewhere?), I envision something different.

The paddle is a sort of higher-dimensional "master-brane," superimposed on our 4-dimensional world. It is where all strings originate, and quantum noncoherence/foam is a result of the vibrations of this brane (to create strings it must have energy, and vibration is a sign of it's energeticness). The elastic string is well...the string, and the bouncy ball is how the string's interactions manifest themselves when reduced down to our 4-dimensional world. Anyway, each extra brane is two things: 1) A dimension 2) Representative of a fundamental force: there's an electromagnetic brane, a Higgs brane, a strong brane, weak brane, a spin brane (I envision spin as being a guage boson of it's own, but that's another story), etc. When the string passes though each brane, it can either make a point-connection to the brane as it passes through, or it can not make a point-connection. As each string makes different connections, it begins to create the characteristics of a particle in our lower-dimension space.

I also have theories about relating the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics directly to relativity. As well as again, my theories of spin as being it's own field and guage boson.

I tend to be a very quite and stoic person in real life. Now you can see why. My mind tends to be preoccupied. In a way, studying physics is like making tsaheylu with the universe. It's like I'm turning to the universe and telling it "show me your secrets."

[Niri Te]

 You are MY KIND OF PERSON ma Tsyal. And No, I'm not in the "space" yet to tell everyone of my theory, but at the first meetup that Ateyo and I can get to, if I can get a dry erase board for the math, I will.
  I have a feeling that there will be a few of us that will be in our own little world for a couple of hours. No, I am not a Physicist, I am just someone with an engineering background, who studies it as best as I can part time.
Niri Te

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

Your theory is very interesting, ma Tsayl Maktoyu! You are way beyond me in your study and understanding of this subject. I find your idea of a 'spin brane' to be an especially interesting one. I have never seen anyone propose an idea like this before. In any case, 'spin' is one of those mysterious things that may or may not be a physical spinning. It is interesting to theorize what kind of gauge bosons might mediate this (for lack of a better term) interaction. And have we seen these bosons in collider work, and simply not recognized them?

[Tsyal Maktoyu]

Your theory is very interesting, ma Tsayl Maktoyu! You are way beyond me in your study and understanding of this subject. I find your idea of a 'spin brane' to be an especially interesting one. I have never seen anyone propose an idea like this before. In any case, 'spin' is one of those mysterious things that may or may not be a physical spinning. It is interesting to theorize what kind of gauge bosons might mediate this (for lack of a better term) interaction. And have we seen these bosons in collider work, and simply not recognized them?

I wouldn't say I'm that far beyond. Right now I'm trying to make these theories without the mathematics involved. That's why I can't wait to transfer to my new Uni this fall, where I can finally start learning the math of quantum mechanics and start putting it to my theories.

As for why nobody has theorized spin as a boson before, I'm surprised, too. Looking at the standard model, spin is the only characteristic of particles not given by a corresponding boson (color, charge, mass, etc. are all the result of bosons). I'm assuming the existence of Higgs at this point.

As for detecting a spin boson in a collider, I'd expect you'd need even higher energies than those even needed to detect the Higgs. I theorize that spin was probably the first boson to emerge, the moment the energy released by the Big Bang began to quantize into particles. At that moment a force would be needed to differentiate them in quantum states, hence spin. Whether we will ever be able to achieve energies THAT high, I don't know.

[Niri Te]

 Please forgive me in advance for postulating something that might be viewed as VEEEEEERY Stupid, or, at the least ecologically irresponsible.
We already HAVE something that might come closerto the energy levels, pressures, and temperatures, not long after the big bang.
Would it be possible to devise measuring equipment that could be located at a safe enough distance from the test medium to assure that it could transmit the databefore it was destroyed bu the test? The equipment would have to be several thousand miles away, but what about detonating a Fusion Device, (That is a mini "H-Bomb) out in space?
Don't be too hard on me folks, I'm only trying to help.
Niri Te

[Seze Mune]

Oh, I don't know, ma Niri Te, but perhaps we could do a twofer here and combine that explosion with an attempt to divert that asteroid which is supposedly on its way to devastate life on earth as we know it.  Right now I doubt that painting half of it white to affect its trajectory/spin is feasible.  But an explosion.....well, that's doable, srak?

[Niri Te]

 If I had it's mass, speed, and radian in respect to Earth, I could come up with a VERY simplistic flight path for it, that does does not take into effect any gravitational pertubations,
With that, I could make a W.A.G. about how big a dent we would need to make in our nuclear arsenal, to make that thing go away. ORRR, I could just wait till NASA, or JPL come up with a much better energy and trajectory curve, and figure it from there.
Niri Te

[Tsyal Maktoyu]

Please forgive me in advance for postulating something that might be viewed as VEEEEEERY Stupid, or, at the least ecologically irresponsible.
We already HAVE something that might come closerto the energy levels, pressures, and temperatures, not long after the big bang.
Would it be possible to devise measuring equipment that could be located at a safe enough distance from the test medium to assure that it could transmit the databefore it was destroyed bu the test? The equipment would have to be several thousand miles away, but what about detonating a Fusion Device, (That is a mini "H-Bomb) out in space?
Don't be too hard on me folks, I'm only trying to help.
Niri Te

Still not enough energy. And not necessary anymore, as places such as the National Ignition Facility can create nuclear fusion on a smaller scale and without the dangers of a thermonuclear device.

Nuclear energy only breaks down/build ups nucleons within nuclei. You'd need even more energy to break down nucleons into a quark and gluon plasma, which would be fundamental particles (which, IIRC, has been done, but don't quote me on that), and create conditions before baryongenesis (when quarks and gluons came together to form protons, neutrons, mesons [two quarks], etc), and we can reach back to roughly 10^-36 seconds after the Big Bang with the LHC, which is the electroweak epoch, when the Higgs boson is speculated to have been created, along with quark and gluon plasma. Has it reached these energies in any tests yet, though?

According to current Big Bang theory, in the Planck epoch (the very moment following the Big Bang), all fundamental forces were a single force which governed the pure energy that was the early universe, and as the universe cooled in the fractions of a second following this epoch, each fundamental force began to peel-away and become an independent force as new particles were created (the grand unified epoch). I theorize the spin boson would be the first to peel off.

[Niri Te]

 I was wondering just how hot it was in the center of the nuclear fireball in the first hundred trillionth of a second after detonation.
Niri Te

[Seze Mune]

Ma Niri Te, that would be fascinating.  But what are physicists doing to determine exactly what caused it?

Here's what I found at a Cal Tech website:

"Today, particle physicists have consistent theories about the history of the universe down to only a trillionth of a second after its birth or even earlier. They can test their theories experimentally with particle accelerators that can simulate events involving enormous energies similar to the condition at the beginning. To learn more about how exactly the universe began, physicists must develop a theory that works at even earlier times after the big bang. Such theory must combine both the general relativity (because of the extreme gravitational field at the beginning) and quantum mechanics (because of the extreme compactness of the universe at the beginning). The goal of physics today is to develop this quantum theory of gravity so that we may one day understand what exactly happened around the moment of the big bang to get the universe started."

I'm no scientist, as you all know...just an interested layperson.  But from what little I know of quantum sciences, there is no time as we think of it.  And IF that is true and I didn't misunderstand that, then in quantum terms there is no beginning and no end of the Big Bang.  Energy unfolds in all directions from all points, going backward as well as forward.  Did I mess that up somehow?

Regarding time:

"The trouble with time started a century ago, when Einstein's special and general theories of relativity demolished the idea of time as a universal constant. One consequence is that the past, present, and future are not absolutes. Einstein's theories also opened a rift in physics because the rules of general relativity (which describe gravity and the large-scale structure of the cosmos) seem incompatible with those of quantum physics (which govern the realm of the tiny). Some four decades ago, the renowned physicist John Wheeler, then at Princeton, and the late Bryce DeWitt, then at the University of North Carolina, developed an extraordinary equation that provides a possible framework for unifying relativity and quantum mechanics. But the Wheeler-­DeWitt equation has always been controversial, in part because it adds yet another, even more baffling twist to our understanding of time.

"One finds that time just disappears from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation," says Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille, France. "It is an issue that many theorists have puzzled about. It may be that the best way to think about quantum reality is to give up the notion of time—that the fundamental description of the universe must be timeless."

Source:  Newsflash: Time May Not Exist