Why is it popularly referred to as the "God particle"? Ain't that just setting you up for an enormous anti-climax? I mean, "Hey, we found the Higgs boson, which adds evidence that our theory is heading in the right direction. OK peeps, back to work on the next objective."

We're all going to sucked into the black-hole of doom!

All because a bunch of nerdy-professor types want to find the particle of creation.

[edit] The above comment just shows my vast intellect on the subject.

No doubt they will discover the God particle is made up up three new sub particles.....

Mark_australia

I think a lot of discoveries in physics are initiated by Theoretical Physicists and proven by Experimental Physicists sometimes after a long period has elapsed. Einstein's General Relativity Theory would be a well known example.

The best explanation IMHO of how the Higgs may be found, follows, for those that are interested:

"Protons are made up of Quarks, and the force that holds these quarks together inside a proton is the color force. It turns out that when you try to pull two quarks apart the color force DOESN'T get weaker with distance. Because of this, the farther you pull them apart the more energy you need to do so. At a certain point it is more favorable for two other quarks to be created using the energy you are pulling with than for the two quarks to continue to get further away from each other. These newly created quarks are bound by the strong force to the original two quarks, so instead of pulling two quarks apart you end up creating two more quarks and you come away with two hadrons, which are a class of particle that is made up of quarks.

Now, because of this effect, smashing protons together at huge energies results in not just two new quarks, but a LOT of new quarks. These new quarks all bind together and form various particles of various masses, most of which decay extremely quickly. During the various decay processes, even more types of particles can be created, such as leptons, photons, and bosons.

Now, if the higgs boson has a mass that is within the energy range of the LHC, then sometimes these various particles and decay processes can lead to the creation of a Higgs boson. By looking at the various particle tracks in the detectors and by following all the decay processes we can piece together where a higgs might be created. The problem is that this isn't a black and white picture where we can go "Bingo! There it is!". The particle creation and decay processes are inherently random in certain ways which forces us to collide HUGE numbers of protons together and look at all of their tracks in hopes of sorting out where the Higgs might be from the rest of the bunch, which we can refer to as "noise".

The entire process takes years to bear fruit, if at all, and currently the LHC has done over 1 trillion collisions in search of the Higgs boson".

kiteboy dave said...
Atoms have electrons in their nucleus ...

Hmmmm. That's an interesting change since I went to school .

azymuth said...

Higgs Particle announcement coming up on the 4th of July - exciting stuff.

ALP announces Higgs-Boson Tax to commence 5th July

^^^???

Anyway I should mention that I find myself with the majority of physicists, atheists, and others who cringe a little every time the press calls the H-B the "G.d Particle".
Not a great nickname for it, but the press loves it.

edit.. found who to blame
The particle has been so difficult to pin down that the physicist Leon Lederman reportedly wanted to call his book "The Goddamn Particle." But he truncated that epithet to "The God Particle," which may have helped elevate the particle's allure in popular culture.

sausage said...

An easy way to remember is to think that electrons are your boardshorts and the nucleus is your wetsuit - they belong on the outside.

even easier.. imagine that electrons are black dots on your yellow polka and nucleuses ... you know ...there are two safe inside
(as long as you do not smash them in the linear collider)
the rest will be a dark matter and a pinch of grey

Ian K said...

How much did that accelerator cost? Well, I know scientists aren't the smartest kids on the block, but win lose or draw, 2, 4 or 6 sigmas, now is the time to announce they've got their man.

Sigmas were only 4cyl

Poodle said...

No doubt they will discover the God particle is made up up three new sub particles.....

Haha, well said.
Towards the end of the movie, "What the Bleep"
there is a section which does this in reverse, ie:shows our galaxy as a miniscule particle in a far greater set of uber galaxys and all of those being a small part in another larger gathering and so forth. Fractal imaging I think it is, but the most amazing thing they say in this movie is that you are god. You are the god of your own life an if there is an external god it can only work through you so you have the ultimate power over how god acts. I think that's pretty cool, but try telling that to your wife. haha

pattiecannon said...

Poodle said...

No doubt they will discover the God particle is made up up three new sub particles.....

Haha, well said.
Towards the end of the movie, "What the Bleep"
there is a section which does this in reverse, ie:shows our galaxy as a miniscule particle in a far greater set of uber galaxys and all of those being a small part in another larger gathering and so forth. Fractal imaging I think it is, but the most amazing thing they say in this movie is that you are god. You are the god of your own life an if there is an external god it can only work through you so you have the ultimate power over how god acts. I think that's pretty cool, but try telling that to your wife. haha

You got to the end of the movie?

The laws of M-theory allow for different universes with different apparent laws, depending on how the internal space is curled. M-theory has solutions that allow for many different internal spaces, perhaps as many as 10500 (that's 500 zeros people), which means it allows for 10500 different universes, each with its own laws. To get an idea how many that is, think about this: If some being could analyse the laws predicted for each of those universes in just one millisecond and had started working on it at the big bang, at present that being would have studied just 1020 of them. And that's without coffee breaks.

In one of those universes I'm not at work.

(an aside: I just had the most boring meeting/presentation. I fell asleep for about 2 minutes during one presentation. In my dream she was still talking, and then paused to put a video on. The video was her talking some more.)

evlPanda said...

You got to the end of the movie?

The laws of M-theory allow for different universes with different apparent laws, depending on how the internal space is curled. M-theory has solutions that allow for many different internal spaces, perhaps as many as 10500 (that's 500 zeros people), which means it allows for 10500 different universes, each with its own laws. To get an idea how many that is, think about this: If some being could analyse the laws predicted for each of those universes in just one millisecond and had started working on it at the big bang, at present that being would have studied just 1020 of them. And that's without coffee breaks.

In one of those universes I'm not at work.

(an aside: I just had the most boring meeting/presentation. I fell asleep for about 2 minutes during one presentation. In my dream she was still talking, and then paused to put a video on. The video was her talking some more.)

That is the kind of crap I was talking about.
That is philosophy, not science.
It presupposes that string theory is correct for a start. Theories built upon other theories that are as yet unproven.

"Whenever there is a simple error that most laymen fall for, there is always a slightly more sophisticated version of the same problem that the experts fall for" Amos Tversky

Mark _australia said...

evlPanda said...

You got to the end of the movie?

The laws of M-theory allow for different universes with different apparent laws, depending on how the internal space is curled. M-theory has solutions that allow for many different internal spaces, perhaps as many as 10500 (that's 500 zeros people), which means it allows for 10500 different universes, each with its own laws. To get an idea how many that is, think about this: If some being could analyse the laws predicted for each of those universes in just one millisecond and had started working on it at the big bang, at present that being would have studied just 1020 of them. And that's without coffee breaks.

In one of those universes I'm not at work.

(an aside: I just had the most boring meeting/presentation. I fell asleep for about 2 minutes during one presentation. In my dream she was still talking, and then paused to put a video on. The video was her talking some more.)

That is the kind of crap I was talking about.
That is philosophy, not science.
It presupposes that string theory is correct for a start. Theories built upon other theories that are as yet unproven.

"Whenever there is a simple error that most laymen fall for, there is always a slightly more sophisticated version of the same problem that the experts fall for" Amos Tversky

Theories are allowed to predate observation. The theory, usually described mathematically, has to add up. Later observations, for example the atom bomb, prove them. Because of the maths there is often a lot of confidence beforehand.

The universe is not as we experience it. Observation has shown this again and again. Take relativity for example. The satellites used for GPS have to be constantly corrected because time for them is different than time for us. Time is relative. All this was in Einstein's head before we even invented satellites.

What makes you think there isn't a smaller particle, or that knowing about it won't lead to new technological advances?

evlPanda said...
.....What makes you think there isn't a smaller particle, or that knowing about it won't lead to new technological advances?

So, how long before kite/board manufacturers start using this in their marketing pimping?

I can see it now, "blah blah blah.... the pro model has 20% more Higgs Particles sewn into the leading edge for increased upwind performance and better relaunch... blah blah blah"