Koki on 6/7/2012 at 09:25
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?
Warp drive? We're just one step closer to figuring out why a hat lying on a table is actually lying on a table and not slowly floating towards the ceiling.
Chimpy Chompy on 6/7/2012 at 09:43
Well we have at least (probably) verified our explanation for why there is a hat and not just subatomic particles charging around the cosmos at light speed.
Briareos H on 6/7/2012 at 09:49
Hat-related experiments make me uncomfortable.
june gloom on 6/7/2012 at 10:47
Quote Posted by Koki
Warp drive? We're just one step closer to figuring out why a hat lying on a table is actually lying on a table and not slowly floating towards the ceiling.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity)
Koki on 6/7/2012 at 12:55
Not included in the Standard Model without the Higgs Boson.
That's the punchline; the whole point of the Higgs Boson is to give mass to particles because otherwise they can't even explain it in the Standard Model - after coming up with six quarks, six leptons and fife bosons the fuckers still can't answer why are you sitting on your ass right now instead of gently floating around your basement!
So hey, let's come up with another boson that does just that and nothing else. Well that's convenient!
I hope some day the whole Standard Model will be proven to be just a bunch of ad-hoc band-aid bullshit and I don't care how many years will that put the modern physics back.
Nicker on 9/7/2012 at 06:54
Quote Posted by Koki
I hope some day the whole Standard Model will be proven to be just a bunch of ad-hoc band-aid bullshit and I don't care how many years will that put the modern physics back.
Ha ha ha... Poe-ki.
You can't be real. It wouldn't be fair.
nbohr1more on 9/7/2012 at 21:39
Anti-Gravity? = Unlikely
Real world application?
Look to those funny guys in bunny suits making highly purified Silicon slices with processes that are controlled down to the quantum level.
It wont be long until they find a use for this newly found precision...
heywood on 11/7/2012 at 09:32
Quote Posted by demagogue
BTW, everybody interested in this story should read
The Theory of Almost Everything, probably the best book for laypeople on the standard model. Even if it's of course far from the final theory, the SM is still very special, and that book made a good case that it's one of the greatest and most successful creations of humankind, developed over half a century by 100s of the smartest researchers on the planet over their entire careers ... and even if parts of it have to be rewritten, it's going to stay around no matter what.
The fact we have to spend billions and billions of dollars and years of work to identify even the smallest data that would say something new about it (and even that is confirming predictions) I think is a testament that this theory is on the edge of every physical process that humans care about. It's a far cry from something like the aether theory, which just completely fell apart under scrutiny. There may come better & deeper theories to describe reality like Super-string Theory, but at that point we're getting so far from the everyday reality that humans can deal with that people still question whether it can ever be a science at all... If it can't, then SM plus a few tweaks may well stand on the bleeding edge of what we can hope to understand. I think that makes it special not out of hubris, but actually out of modesty. This may be as far as we can go, and we can feel privileged we got ourselves this far.
It's just another mathematical model. It explains and predicts a lot of observations, more than previous models. But like previous models it has flaws (e.g. hierarchy problem), it doesn't predict some other notable observations (e.g. matter/anti-matter asymmetry and neutrino properties) and it is at odds with some of our other models (e.g. the standard cosmological model).
It's like the periodic table, a model to classify stuff we've found. I don't see how you can attribute any religious significance to it. Or why you would want to.
