'God particle' expected to be found soon

[flashl]

GENEVA - The father of a theoretical subatomic particle dubbed "the God particle" says he's almost sure it will be confirmed in the next year in a race between powerful research equipment in the United States and Europe.

British physicist Peter Higgs, who more than 40 years ago postulated the existence of the particle in the makeup of the atom, said is visit to a new accelerator in Geneva last weekend encouraged him that the Higgs boson will soon be seen.

The $2 billion Large Hadron Collider, under construction since 2003, is expected to start operating by June at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (known as CERN).

It likely will take several months before the hundreds of scientists from around the world are ready to start smashing together protons to study their composition.

YN

Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho are not ready to experience the 'God Particle' yet ...

Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More

Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

[GodlessBiker]

1. Ah, yes. The particle that endows matter with mass. This should be good.

[Occulus]

2. Next, we'll be asking if we can manipulate it.

Hilarity will ensue.

[GodlessBiker]

4. What is its half-life? They might have to work very fast.

[Occulus]

19. I could take that as snark, but let me ask this instead:

I just tried to comprehend some of the theory behind establishing the existence of the the Higgs boson, and my mind and my wits started singing trios with my logic instead. I'm showing my almost complete ignorance of the subject here, but my question is, if the Higgs boson decays so very rapidly, how can it possibly be associated with something so constant as mass?

Or does it only decay when it is isolated? In which case, why? And how does it manage to not decay when it is part of a particle?

(I suspect, if I could answer those questions, I would have a Nobel prize in my back pocket, but... I just can't be bothered with that at the moment. :D)

[caraher]

20. I can help a little I think...

You can't think of the Higgs as something that hitches a ride on other particles to give them mass. The mass of one real Higgs is expected to be hundreds of times greater than the mass of, say, a proton or neutron, let alone quarks and electrons, so it's not as though the mass of a particle come from having a bunch of Higgs bosons as constituent particles. I'm quite sure of that...

Now my hand-waving, shaky understanding of the way the Higgs confers mass centers on the notion of "virtual" particles. One way of looking at the basic idea is that the vacuum is constantly "foaming" with virtual particles. There is not enough energy available to create "real" particles, but there is also always some uncertainty in any energy which means there's a corresponding uncertainty in the number of particles present. (A more down-to-earth example is the photon... you've probably heard that photons are the force mediating particle for electromagnetic interactions, but its not as if there's a stream of real photons flowing from every charged particle. If you want to use quantum field theory to model this you wind up with expressions that look like expressions one would write for a real photon - but they do not conserve energy!)

This is true of any field (you should think of these "particles" not as little balls flying around through space but as something more akin to a pulse-shaped traveling wave on a string). So my way of making sense of the Higgs as generator of mass is that mass arises because of the interaction of a given particle with the surrounding sea of virtual Higgs bosons. Inertia arises because (for some reason) these Higgs interactions conspire to maintain any state of motion for the massive, real particles.

There's probably something wrong with this picture... the main part that bothers me is that it seems there might be a preferred reference frame in which one might say the Higgs bosons are "at rest." Maybe if I knew more field theory I'd see why this isn't what the theory implies. At the same time, there's still no fully-developed quantum theory that's completely consistent with general relativity, which I think leaves a big window for surprises.

[elfin]

3. Yippee - Black Hole!

as has been postulated by some scientists as the result of this collider. Sorry, no link.

Hoping to survive August, when the whole test takes place.

Alarmists predicted similar dire results from previous experiments --- but now we are getting even closer.

Why can't the "God Particle" be deduced through math and physics? Oh, yeah, they need proof - even at planetary risk.

[Ian David]

5. Did you think the planet was going to survive past January 20, 2009 anyway?

The only things that will survive are cockroaches and Ann Coulter.

[elfin]

6. He-Hee - growing an exoskeloton as fast as I can -- nt

[Exodus 3-14]

8. 'Transmutation'

When they crank that thing up, we are thru(maybe even within 'Real Time').

A good book is 'Secret Life of Plants', and they speak about what happens below ground with 'Transmutation' of the elements. There are things Earth can do that we cannot, and I'll just say that they are making the worst mistake that mankind may ever have made.

*'G-d' Particle:

People should examine 'Bio-Holographic' theories, and also recognize how 'Stem Cells' and 'Plasma Physics' have something very much in common with the Universal 'Organism'.
*I'll just say that this 'G-d' Particle is 'Source', and this Source is the Holy Spirit, whose Imagination and Will created and manifested everything that we perceive(including ourselves), in its 'Precipitated/Crystalized' state of Being.

[FiveGoodMen]

9. .

:wtf:

[Ian David]

11. Whatever it is you've been smoking can probably be used to fumigate houses for termites.

Seriously, though...

Are you okay?

Do you need medical attention?

Maybe a couple days under observation?

Should we call a paramedic for you?

[trotsky]

13. My chakras have been telling me such lately. n/t

[realisticphish]

16. Your chakras are liars

MY chakras, available for 19.95 per chakra, are far more reliable

[mainegreen]

18. Dude! It's all part of the cosmic unconsciousness!

Don't bogart the joint man...

[krispos42]

10. Naming specific cockroaches is redundant

The United States Department of Federal Redundency Department approves!

:-)

[DCKit]

7. What do you call a black hole without enough mass to hold itself together?

Sub-atomic particles.

Granted, it's great fiction, but not science fiction.

[PVnRT]

15. Black holes the size they could produce would disappear almost instantly

There is no need to fear Judgment Day. A little knowledge of physics goes a long way.

And, they have deduced the possibility that this particle exists via math and the known laws of quantum physics.

[crikkett]

12. What is the difference between the god particle and the ganesh particle?

[DavidDvorkin]

14. The god particle is real

Probably will turn out to be real. Unlike the "ganesh particle", the Higgs boson is based on real physics, not pseudoscience.

[crikkett]

17. thx for your help

and for withholding your snark.

I wasn't quite sure what the ganesh particle was purported to be, so I did hw and found this which I'll include for the sake of others. It's a wild theory.

AMansAmoeba
09-30-03, 02:02 AM
The ganesh particle is quartz crystal from a mica like layer found at the vishnu schist at frenchmans mountain complex outside of las vegas. Most of the information you will come across about this is that quartz is currently resonating at a frequency of 8Hz and that the time is approaching when Earth's Schumann Resonance will increase to its next nodal frequency of 13Hz. This number coming from the fibonacci series <1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21...>. With this it is believed that the next phase of creation is about to unfold...along with loads of unbased conjecture. (I'd like to know what supposedly happened when the frequency went from 5Hz to 8Hz, to give them the idea that a new phase is upon us..).

Most the information on the "ganesh particle" is definetely pseudoscience where people are throwing out too many scientific words connected to "love" being the key and the crystals being a grid work of an alien communication device/stargate o_0.... I think thats enough to kindly push it aside for now, but I have been looking around into quartz resonances and will find out any truths behind this nodal frequency jump.

As a side note. I don't believe caltech is researching this. There is a site claiming that it is one of the top ten engine phrases used to reach Caltech’s Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) archive from October 1–31, 2002 ...but through a couple of web hops I discovered around the time of the web pages decree, there was research being done by a Subramanian, Ganesh on the role of small but finite particle inertia on the microstructure of suspensions of heavy particles subjected to an external flow. A Phd at, you guessed it, caltech.

http://www.sciforums.com/archive/index.php/t-28600.html