For all the fellow nerds out there

rumour is we will see hints of a new higgs boson local significance 4 sigma at 700 in one detector and 2 sigma in the other.
Some rumours of evidence for leptoquarks too

Edited by paladisious: 13/12/2015 11:50:07 PM

Any article that explains to the interested layman what you just said?

Edited by paladisious: 14/12/2015 01:06:59 AM

This. Way to make me feel like a fucking idiot.

Wake me up when they find aliens ffs

You're only 16. Don't worry.

Make sure you do physics for the HSC or whatever it is called in SA.

Ill give it a try

Forces are produced by fields.
e.g. the gravitational field and the gravitational force
the electromagnetic field and the electromagnetic force
every force and field has an associated particle.. Gravity allegedly has the graviton. Electromagnetism has the photon. Strong and weak nuclear forces has gluons and vector bosons respectively. Also every particle has a feild. Electrons for example are produced by a dirac field
for any force you have a potential.Gravity is the easiest to conceptualize because it just takes the form of the landscape. If you have two hills either side of a valley then the potential looks like two hills either side of a valley. If you put a ball in such a potential it will roll to the lowest point.
For the Higgs field we have a potential for the field itself (rather than a potential produced by the field).
The higgs field goes to the minimum of the potential itself. So wherever the minimum is that is the value of the higgs field throughout the universe. If there was a similar effective potential for the gravitational field the gavitational field would be non zero everywhere.
The value of the higgs field allong with how a particle interacts with the higgs particle determines its mass at rest. All known particles (except maybe the right handed neutrino if it exists) have perculiar properties known as local symmetries that forbid them from having a mass any other way. The Higgs also allows all probabilities to add to 1 so the standard model doesnt make sense even mathematically without it.

People have compared the higgs to the following analogy: imagine the prime minister walking through a room. A pack of people and journalists stop them for conversation slowing their path through the room. An ex prime minister walks in too but can walk through unhindered because no one wants to talk to them. The prime ministers are the particles and the higgs field is the crowd of journalists.

There can be multiple Higgs fields and particles. Supersymmetry, one of the most popular extensions of the standard model has many theoretical motivations and it requires there to be at least two higgs. Cosmological explanations for why there are more particles than antiparticles often require multiple higgs particles too. These two theories will get a boost from a second higgs. Having multiple scalar particles like higgs's also allow for cosmic phase transitions. A phase transition can be thought of when a potential (picture the landscape again) is in more than one direction and changing with temperature. It can roll to a minimum in one direction at one temperature and another minimum at a lower temperature. The universe would have different properties in different phases and particles would have different masses in each phase.
This is like when you have a change in prime minister. When the voting public cools on gillard or abbott there is a critical temperature where the old and new prime minister equally attract journalists. Then after the phase tranistion rudd or turnbull walks through a room hindered by journalists but gillard or abbott can walk through unhindered.
ill explain leptoquarks and local significance in the next post

I'm glad I left physics before it got too hard.

Who has a large hardon?

The atom is made of protons neutrons and electrons.
Protons and neutrons are made of quarks and elecrrons are a category of particles known as leptons. A leptoquark can decay into leptons and quarks. A quark can decay into a lepton and a leptoquark.
They are also scalar particle so the scalar fields can roll toward a minimum in the leptoquark direction. If there was an early universe phase where the leptoquark field had a nonzero value everywhere it would mean the universe would be full of a quantum charge known as colour charge and some cool weird and wacky physics would happen in this phase.

They also allow protons to decay into other particles but at this mass and the type of leptoquark people are talking about it would such a rare event we would not have seen it.

As for all the stuff about significance and sigmas.
Picture the LHC as a radio. As you scroll the tuner accross the freqencies you look for particles rather than radio stations. Mostly you will get background static but occasionally you git a whir or a buzz. Some of these whirs and buzzes are radio stations (parti les) others are just coincidences. If you graphed sound vs frequency you can work out the average amount of static and measure the deviations from this average with a measurement called a standard deviation or a sigma. Buzzes and whirrs are 2 to 4 sigma signals. The larger the sigma the less likely it is to go away. 3 sigmas usually go away but still generate excitement. 4 sigmas occasional go away but rarely. No 5 sigma signal has gone away so it is usually branded a discovery unless its an astroparticle experiment where things are more noisy and wild.
There are 2 detectors at the lhc
atlas and cms. The rumour is that one has seen a very heavy 2nd higgs at 2 sigma and the other at 4 sigma. The combined signal if they are at the same mass is 2 squared plus 4 squared all square rooted which is 4.5 sigma.
if the particles have a large mass seperation the combined significance would be less than 4 sigma.
The rumoured mass is 700GeV which is the amount of energy (converted to mass by e equals mc squared) that an electron gets in a 700 billion volt kick. This is too heavy for it to be a loner extra higgs (known as a two higgs doublet model) because unitarity becomes a problem.
If the signal is real you have to have a extra particles so supersymmetry becomes more likely (its allready reasonably likely for a number of reasons)

wheres Dr Karl when you need him:d

The extent of my knowledge of the Higgs Boson is it pretty much explains everything about the universe.

What it explains - no idea

I take it my laymen explanations failed :(

just how everything gets mass and why probabilities add to 1

This :lol:

Space just doesn't interest me at all really. Unless it's life and stuff on other planets...

this is particle physics not astro...

EG :oops:

Astrophysics

Soooo..... Im going to try a Dr Karl here for you and interpret this (I may be extremely wrong)

The Higgs Boson particle is inside everything. It is what gives us Mass, not in the same way 2lt Coke and 1kg of Doritos gives you mass but more in that it interacts with gravity for us.

Physics is about understanding the universe and putting all the discoveries into a system that people can use to predict stuff or help work stuff out.

This system is called the 'standard model' and it covers 90% of everything we understand.

You drop a ball - it falls? why? Gravity. Why? look in the standard model. it explains shit.

What about the stuff it doesn't explain? Well this is where predictions come in. You can use the standard model and look at something weird like the center of a black hole and say "I reckon if there was a new particle that accounted for this weirdness then we would understand this black hole".

Using MATHS and the standard model scientists can guesstimate the weight of the hypothetical unknown particle.
Then they can smash atoms in the LHC at really really really really fast speed and see if in the wreckage any new particles equal the weight of the one they are looking for.

SOOOOooooo.... A common prediction in physics is super symmetry, we have already found the Higgs Boson, but super symmetry would be alot clearer if there were 2 of the little buggers every where, not just one....

I've always wondered, does the bible allow for alien life?

No idea, I'm agnostic

Apart from Angels and Demons appearing in physical form

Actually, come to think of it, the Mormons believe in aliens, no?
Admittedly, The Book Of Mormon is a bit revisionist...

Mormons and Scientologists have space aliens in their religions. I'm sure there are others.

Doesn't matter. All religions modify themselves to suit the truth when they have no choice.

Surely some Bishop or Iman will miraculously find an obscure text passage that opens the door if interpreted in the right way to their religions particular holy book always acknowledging the existence of said alien.

The Bible's got plenty of Non-humans already, no need to make any up.

i think a lot of religions forbid mastarbation ...
fuck religion

Fuck religion

Fuck yourself instead.

The complexity of the physics involved may be difficult for us to grasp but the potential discoveries with this technology is overwhelming.

For example, we wouldn't have modern telecommunications or satellite navigation of any form if it wasn't for many discoveries especially Einstein's theory of general relativity and the photoelectric effect.

Sometimes it just takes the best part of 100 years for the technology to become practical. But its still VERY important.

There's a good doco on Netflix about the LHC, probs a few years old now but

Angels

The bible doesn't rule out the existence of aliens, but it doesn't really make sense for them to exist.
If man was created in the image of God, in that it possessed characteristic of said creator, it wouldn't make much sense for a more intelligent life form to have been created. So most Chrsitians would probably say that they don't see how aliens fit into everything.

As for Angels, that simply means 'messenger', so while we tend to think of gay men with long hair in white robes with wings and halo, it probably just means someone with a 'message' from God, in some circumstances anyway.