Higgs Boson found

[gturner]

So CERN has found the Higgs with a 5-sigma signal (1 in a million chance they are mistaken). Peter Higgs teared up at the announcement.


Any thoughts on finding the last piece of the standard model?

Any significance that it was announced on Independence Day?

Any ideas on finding a way to neutralize it?

Any suspicion that Claire Danes announced her pregnancy today in an attempt to upstage the discovery?

 

[Christopher]

It's more accurate to say that they found a particle consistent with the predictions for the Higgs boson. Its spin still has to be confirmed.

And if it does pan out, it's by no means the last piece of the Standard Model. It's a key piece, a powerful confirmation for the Standard Model, but there's no point where scientific study is "finished." Confirming the Higgs boson and studying its properties could help us gain insight into other outstanding questions of physics, or could reveal something unexpected that creates whole new questions. This is just the next step in an open-ended process. The Standard Model isn't the Holy Grail, it's just a tool to help us find answers about the universe. Finding the Higgs would help confirm that it's a useful and reliable tool and let us improve our understanding of how to use it, but it's a means to the end of studying the universe, not an end in itself.

http://io9.com/5923494/what-todays-higgs-boson-discovery-really-means

 

[Captain_Nick]

Two questions

- does this mean that string theory is correct?
- next Star Trek movie will we be seeing 'boson fields' and 'higgs particle streams'?

I am not a techie and would like to know.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Any thoughts on finding the last piece of the standard model?

Well, as Christopher correctly pointed out, it's hardly "the last piece" of the standard model. Still lots of work to do on that. (thankfully!)

Any significance that it was announced on Independence Day?

Since it was discovered by CERN in Europe, I doubt it.

Any ideas on finding a way to neutralize it?

Uh?

 

[Beagleman]

Any ideas on finding a way to neutralize it?

Uh?

I take it he has plans to destroy the fabric of the universe.

 

[{ Emilia }]

Since it was discovered by CERN in Europe, I doubt it.

I don't like it when you remind me that Switzerland is in Europe.

 

[Christopher]

Two questions

- does this mean that string theory is correct?

No, it has nothing to do with string theory. The Standard Model considerably predates string theory. To date, there is no known way of experimentally testing string theory, and a number of physicists have come to see it as a blind alley.

- next Star Trek movie will we be seeing 'boson fields' and 'higgs particle streams'?

You never know what technobabble they might come up with. But the term "boson" has been around for generations already. Photons, the exchange particles of electromagnetic force (and the constituents of light), are bosons, and so are gravitons if they exist.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Since it was discovered by CERN in Europe, I doubt it.

I don't like it when you remind me that Switzerland is in Europe.

Better to have them in Europe than against Europe...

 

[{ Emilia }]

Since it was discovered by CERN in Europe, I doubt it.

I don't like it when you remind me that Switzerland is in Europe.

Better to have them in Europe than against Europe...

Isn't both true?

 

[iguana_tonante]

Good point.

 

[MacLeod]

Any significance that it was announced on Independence Day?

To over 6bn people the 4th of July is just another day, with no signifigance at all. Though I might be mistaken but wasn't there a Physics convention scheduled for the 4th of July, which is why it was announced then.

http://www.ichep2012.com.au/

As for whether or not it is the Higgs-Boson particle I'll wait for them to finish studying what they think they have found.

 

[gturner]

Any ideas on finding a way to neutralize it?

'Uh?

I take it he has plans to destroy the fabric of the universe.

I'm not nearly to the planning stages yet, as that would be wildly premature. I'm just looking for reasearch directions to figure out the most cost-effective and efficient method to destroy the fabric of the universe.

 

[trekkiedane]

So you're asking the greatest minds in technobabble in the universe how to build a Higgs-field inhibitor?

I'm afraid that particular gizmo won't be invented before the script requires it...

 

[Christopher]

Well, it would certainly involve reversing the polarity of something.

 

[gturner]

In this region of altered space we can use the tractor emiters to partially cancel the the Higgs field around the ship, lowering our apparent mass while enhancing that emitted by the impulse engines, allowing us to escape the anomally.

 

[trekkiedane]

I was writing on the TBBS,
just me and all the rest,
we heard the news from CERN that day:
"The Higgs found in a test!"
gturner had an idea
to neutralize the thing.
He tried to make us help him
but we all would rather sing:

Bounce a graviton particle beam
...​

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Well, it would certainly involve reversing the polarity of something.

But only after you install some heisenberg compensators.

 

[Vendikarr]

Well, it would certainly involve reversing the polarity of something.

But only after you install some heisenberg compensators.

And at some point it must be run through a deflector array

 

[trekkiedane]

^All good advice and as everyone needs a prior knowledge of the existence of these things/procedures, that is to say they need to be mentioned very early in the narrative, this actually is the place and (in?) time to do so (remember where you are right now -at some point someone will be asking you where you were when 'they' plotted to end all of existence).

Oh, this: Something or other needs to be re-aligned after the reversing of the polarity‼

 

[Disruptor]

I keep hearing about this Higgs Boson, but I've yet to see a photo of the guy.