Surprise - FTL Particles (Maybe)

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

So...who knows what the long-overlooked problems will bring in terms of results?  It begs the question of whether the LHC scientists have fully controlled for ALL variables with regards to GPS.  For example, when you read the following, you wonder whether and how the scientists have insulated their measurements from something like THIS happening:

"NO AEROPLANES fell out of the sky and no one died. But in late 2009 engineers noticed that satellite-positioning receivers for a new navigation aid at Newark airport in New Jersey were suffering brief daily breaks in reception. Something was interfering with the signals from orbiting global positioning system (GPS) satellites. It took two months for investigators from the Federal Aviation Authority to track down the problem: a driver who passed by on the nearby New Jersey Turnpike each day had a cheap GPS jammer in his truck."


The Economist: no jam tomorrow

Hopefully, this person will spend a long time in prison. This kind of behavior on the part of a human being is pathetic.

As far as controlling variables, they do this by sampling many neutrinos. They have to, because you cannot precisely control neutrinos.

[Seze Mune]

Sampling many neutrinos is good research.  They did that for three years before they announced the results, I think.  I wonder what made them decide to look for a loose cable after all that time?

[Seze Mune]

"Scientists said they have gotten even closer to proving the existence of the elusive Higgs boson, the so-called "God particle" that supplies mass to matter and would complete Albert Einstein's theory of the universe.

"Analyzing data from some 500 trillion sub-atomic particle collisions designed to emulate conditions right after the Big Bang when the universe was formed, scientists at Fermilab outside Chicago produced some 1,000 Higgs particles over a decade of work.

"Unfortunately, this hint is not significant enough to conclude that the Higgs boson exists," said Rob Roser, a physicist at Fermilab, near Chicago, in explaining the findings being presented on Wednesday at a conference in La Thuille, Italy.

"The image scientists have of the short-lived Higgs particles, which almost immediately decay into other particles, is still slightly "fuzzy," Roser said.

"The probability that what physicists detected is not a Higgs boson and is instead a statistical fluke was 1 in 250, which is near the threshold of 1 in 740 that physics has set to establish proof of a sub-atomic particle's existence.

"The hunt for the Higgs boson is significant because it would show the existence of an invisible field thought to permeate the entire universe. The Higgs field was posited in the 1960s by British scientist Peter Higgs as the way that matter obtained mass after the universe was created during the Big Bang."

Source: Scientists at U.S. lab detect hints of elusive particle

[Ftiafpi]

I'm assuming it means that scientists think that the field exists in the entire universe (which, really, it should if it does exist).

[Seze Mune]

Apparently I misinterpreted this. Now I'm thinking it's hard to believe that mass exists because of something which is practically too small and evanescent to be easily detectable even in trillions of trials. It strains the bounds of credulity.

[Tsanten Eywa 'eveng]

Tevatron experiments report latest results in
search for Higgs boson:


New measurements announced today by scientists from the CDF and DZero collaborations at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory indicate that the elusive Higgs boson may nearly be cornered. After analyzing the full data set from the Tevatron accelerator, which completed its last run in September 2011, the two independent experiments see hints of a Higgs boson.

Physicists from the CDF and DZero collaborations found excesses in their data that might be interpreted as coming from a Higgs boson with a mass in the region of 115 to 135 GeV. In this range, the new result has a probability of being due to a statistical fluctuation at level of significance known among scientists as 2.2 sigma. This new result also excludes the possibility of the Higgs having a mass in the range from 147 to 179 GeV.

Physicists claim evidence of a new particle only if the probability that the data could be due to a statistical fluctuation is less than 1 in 740, or three sigmas. A discovery is claimed only if that probability is less than 1 in 3.5 million, or five sigmas.

http://www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/press_releases/2012/Higgs-Boson-20120307.html

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

Apparently I misinterpreted this. Now I'm thinking it's hard to believe that mass exists because of something which is practically too small and evanescent to be easily detectable even in trillions of trials. It strains the bounds of credulity.

Ma Seze, I am sure you are aware of wave-particle duality, where waves and particles can be one and the same. Since there appears to be a field that defines what mass is, there has to be a corresponding particle. The Standard Model predicts this, and in this regard, has never been wrong. For instance, all the quarks have been found. W and Z bosons have been found (carriers of the weak force, and closely related to the Higgs particle, if it exists). A couple of these quarks are very heavy, and therefore require a lot of energy to create. And in general, the heavier the particle, the shorter its half-life is. These short half-life particles are extremely difficult to measure, and usually decay before they reach a detector. Thus, their existence is determined by secondary particles created by their decay.

These posthumous results from the Tevatron are not at all surprising. They agree very nicely with data that has been measured at the LHC (which is, as of this writing, down to operating temperature, and they are checking it out for the 2012 physics run).

It would be very ironic if the Tevatron ends up being credited with the discovery of the Higgs particle. It will make our bad science decisions here in the US look all that much worse.

[Seze Mune]

Ah, irayo ma 'Eylan, I can follow that logic.

But why would crediting the Tevatron make our science decisions look that much worse?

[Tsyal Maktoyu]

Not sure it would make the Tevatron look bad as much as it would make the LHC look bad (looking for Higgs was one of the main reasons for it's creation, after all and having the Tevatron steal it's thunder wouldn't look very good).

Also, in interaction, would it be reasonable to predict an amount of CP-violation with the Higgs? Here's my logic. So far, the only massive gauge bosons discovered are those that carry the weak force, the photon and gluon are massless, and thus their interactions occur at the speed of light, in accordance with E=mc^2. Now, CP-violation is a result of the spin charility between left and right-handed particles (that's my theory at least, IIRC the exact cause of CP Violation is still being interpreted, this is my interpretation) and because the weak bosons travel and interact at a speed less than C, relativistic effects involving a viewpoint become important. This is opposed to the C-travelling bosons, in which the particle's left or right-handed spin in relation to it's velocity are unimportant, as opposed to them being important as is the case with the massive weak bosons. Now, if discovered, the Higgs would also be a massive particle, and I predict the spin-charility of particles it interacts with would also be important. Thoughts? Could violation in Higgs be an explanation for why neutrinos are capable of changing types randomly?

[Seze Mune]

Ma Tsyal, can you please dumb this down a little for me?

What is spin-charility?

Do you mind if I say I'm amused by what I'm reading about CP-violation and the balance of matter and anti-matter in the universe? 

What amuses me is the attempt to build a rickety** intellectual framework over what obviously already operates to create the known universe.  I'm not sure how this relates to what seems to work in the relatively unknown universes postulated by the quantum and M-theories, which also interact with our own, but I'm sure it gets complicated.

Back on Earth, we don't even really know how the human body works, how the systems are interrelated with each other and with the environment upon which we depend completely for our existence.  And yet we spend massive amounts of human energy to try to understand what is happening within what amounts to (philosophically at the least) God's body.  Heady stuff indeed, and I mean that multidimensionally.

**Please don't be offended.  When I say 'rickety', what I mean is that the intellectual structure develops by fits and starts and that new theories seem to contradict old ones and then we're off down another rabbit hole which leads to a certain destination, but only under exacting conditions which don't always apply, hence the violations (which just indicate an incomplete understanding of what's happening and why).  It's like starting out on one side of a river and building a bridge by nailing boards extending out willy-nilly, supported only by the frail structure behind them.  This doesn't invalidate the work, but it does amuse lesser minds like my own.

[Seze Mune]

James Cameron to Dive to Ocean's Deepest Point

This kind of exploration makes more sense to me, for example.

[Tsyal Maktoyu]

Ma Tsyal, can you please dumb this down a little for me?

What is spin-charility?

Do you mind if I say I'm amused by what I'm reading about CP-violation and the balance of matter and anti-matter in the universe? 

What amuses me is the attempt to build a rickety** intellectual framework over what obviously already operates to create the known universe.  I'm not sure how this relates to what seems to work in the relatively unknown universes postulated by the quantum and M-theories, which also interact with our own, but I'm sure it gets complicated.

Back on Earth, we don't even really know how the human body works, how the systems are interrelated with each other and with the environment upon which we depend completely for our existence.  And yet we spend massive amounts of human energy to try to understand what is happening within what amounts to (philosophically at the least) God's body.  Heady stuff indeed, and I mean that multidimensionally.

**Please don't be offended.  When I say 'rickety', what I mean is that the intellectual structure develops by fits and starts and that new theories seem to contradict old ones and then we're off down another rabbit hole which leads to a certain destination, but only under exacting conditions which don't always apply, hence the violations (which just indicate an incomplete understanding of what's happening and why).  It's like starting out on one side of a river and building a bridge by nailing boards extending out willy-nilly, supported only by the frail structure behind them.  This doesn't invalidate the work, but it does amuse lesser minds like my own.

Chirality (sorry, misspelled it the first time) is simply a term for asymmetry, or when an object is not identical to its mirror image. For example, your shoes are an example of Chirality, because the left and right shoes are not identical to each other.

Take two particles traveling in the same direction (such as two electrons, just as this example), one has a 1/2 spin in the direction of its direction of movement, the other has 1/2 spin in the opposite direction of motion. This creates helicity (handedness), right handedness and left handedness, respectively.

This is an example of particle Chirality (the handedness is not the same for particles with mirror spin), and while this Chirality has been found to not matter with the strong and electromagnetic force, it is found to matter with weak interaction.

[Seze Mune]

Aha!  So my brain is a good example of chirality in that it has two hemispheres which are not mirror images.   

[Tsyal Maktoyu]

Yup. Here's the wiki disambiguation of chirality, and how it is defined in math and science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_%28disambiguation%29

[Ftiafpi]

Okay, here's what everyone should do. Go to your library and pick up a copy of the book "The Grand Design" by Stephan Hawking. Amazing book that explains A LOT about the current research and thoughts on subatomic particle research and theory. Download the audio book and listen to it while you drive or exercise if you're too busy to read (like me). This book is NOT just for science nerds and physicists, in fact you'll probably enjoy it more than they would. Heck, I'd recommend it even if you want to just read an inspirational, thought-provoking book.

[Seze Mune]

Okay, here's what everyone should do. Go to your library and pick up a copy of the book "The Grand Design" by Stephan Hawking. Amazing book that explains A LOT about the current research and thoughts on subatomic particle research and theory. Download the audio book and listen to it while you drive or exercise if you're too busy to read (like me). This book is NOT just for science nerds and physicists, in fact you'll probably enjoy it more than they would. Heck, I'd recommend it even if you want to just read an inspirational, thought-provoking book.

Oooo, much appreciated suggestion, ma Ftiafpi.  I will have to see if my local library has this selection! 

[Txur’Itan]

Okay, here's what everyone should do. Go to your library and pick up a copy of the book "The Grand Design" by Stephan Hawking. Amazing book that explains A LOT about the current research and thoughts on subatomic particle research and theory. Download the audio book and listen to it while you drive or exercise if you're too busy to read (like me). This book is NOT just for science nerds and physicists, in fact you'll probably enjoy it more than they would. Heck, I'd recommend it even if you want to just read an inspirational, thought-provoking book.

Oooo, much appreciated suggestion, ma Ftiafpi.  I will have to see if my local library has this selection! 

A very good suggestion.

[Lance R. Casey]

OPERA head resigns

[Niri Te]

Okay, here's what everyone should do. Go to your library and pick up a copy of the book "The Grand Design" by Stephan Hawking. Amazing book that explains A LOT about the current research and thoughts on subatomic particle research and theory. Download the audio book and listen to it while you drive or exercise if you're too busy to read (like me). This book is NOT just for science nerds and physicists, in fact you'll probably enjoy it more than they would. Heck, I'd recommend it even if you want to just read an inspirational, thought-provoking book.

Oooo, much appreciated suggestion, ma Ftiafpi.  I will have to see if my local library has this selection! 

It is a WONDERFUL book for the layman, and once you read it, if you have the slightest genuine interest in HOW things work, you will enjoy the book greatly.
Niri Te

A very good suggestion.

[Ftiafpi]

OPERA head resigns

What? It links to a sleeping bag.