jay pettitt on 4/7/2012 at 10:58
Now everybody can celebrate and eat turkey on July 4th.
(ps, America - you still have stuff in the loft. If you want to pop round and take it some time... ;) )
N'Al on 4/7/2012 at 11:32
\o/
demagogue on 4/7/2012 at 13:49
Yay science.
They predicted, they found, they announced.
SubJeff on 4/7/2012 at 14:06
People seem rather excited by this. I'm glad that such a large and expensive project got some results but what does it really mean for us all? Can I have my warp drive now?
Vivian on 4/7/2012 at 14:09
Yeah, I also am not entirely sure what all this means. We can get closer to understanding the properties of mass - inertia and gravitation? Potentially pretty sweet, but I'm guessing anti-gravitation is not likely any time soon.
Briareos H on 4/7/2012 at 14:41
Just to be precise, the Higgs boson was not found. It'll be at least a year before it is confirmed that this newfound particle is a Higgs boson.
Anyway, it's too early to say what the impact of this discovery will be. Worst case scenario, this particle is the unique symmetry-breaking Higgs boson proposed by the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism within the Standard Model. In that case, the SM is once again confirmed and nothing changes, save for some physicists starting to research whether the (low) mass found for H° has any significance w.r.t. the mass of other subatomic particles. It could slow down theoretical physics in that field for some time, but ultimately (many years) lead to interesting results in the theory of gravity.
Best case scenario, this particle is not Higgs at all, or is one of the many Higgs candidates for a supersymmetry model. Then, parts of the SM need to be rewritten inside a greater unifying theory, leading potentially to a lot of exciting ideas, experiments, models and applications. Probably nothing earth-shattering for a while, but very stimulating for the field of theoretical physics.
demagogue on 4/7/2012 at 15:14
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
People seem rather excited by this. I'm glad that such a large and expensive project got some results but what does it really mean for us all? Can I have my warp drive now?
Come on, this is a fundamental discovery about our universe of the highest order. Not all fundamental knowledge has to be what new blender you can make out of it. Sometimes knowledge is valuable for its own sake.
A new discovery hasn't actually empirically touched the SM in like the last 30 years, and this touches one of the most interesting parts of it and gives it some empirical backing, which turns it from speculative philosophy to actual science about our reality. I mean it's involved in the literal creation of matter... It's a discovery for the ages when it gets fully confirmed.
At least I'm very interested in what our reality actually
is, not what someone's opinion of it is... which is just as valid as anyone else's opinion. Or to quote CP Scott, facts are sacred, opinion is free.
SubJeff on 4/7/2012 at 17:39
Oddly, I'm quite pleased/excited about it despite knowing that it'll make no difference to anything but textbooks and some other theories that will make no difference to anything but textbooks.
I was born too early, about 100 years too early. I want to be able to answer the question "Where were you when the first off-world colony was founded/warp drive successfully tested/sentient AI activated/aliens contacted/true VR mass-marketted?", not "Where were you when this new particle that changed nothing tangible was discovered ?"
I know I'm being a luddite but I want lasers dammnit!
Sg3 on 4/7/2012 at 18:44
100 years from now, the world economy will have long collapsed, no doubt, and science experiments like this won't be occurring due to lack of resources. Welcome to reality as opposed to speculative fiction. (There's a band out there called "We Were Promised Jetpacks," which is hilarious, if slightly dark; no idea what their music is like, but they get points for the name.)
Ulukai on 4/7/2012 at 20:41
"Turned down opportunity to go on 1-hour radio programme to discuss the religious significance of the Higgs particle since there isn't any."
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