Hi Jorrie,

I am not into the field of theoretical physics, but I do understand to some extent what an important discovery this (or conclusive evidence of its absence) would be.

Though, I really don't understand the method in which experiments in LHC or Cern are done.

I have often heard about scientists trying to re-create mini Big Bangs in the LHC, but if they are doing this by colliding particles, what exactly collided during the Big Bang? In the same way, how EXACTLY do we understand that from the collisions a Higg boson has been discovered?

It is really about recreating the equivalent energy densities of some point in time after T0 (the Big Bang).

By slamming heavy particles together at relativistic speeds you get huge releases of energy to examine the behavior of matter, energy, space, and time on tiny and manageable scales.

Obviously, we can't turn the clock back all the way, but we can get closer to a point where things were very "hot" and the primal forces of the universe (gravity, weak nuclear, strong nuclear, and electromagnetic) were believed to be unified.

Determining what particle has been detected is mostly about mass-energy equivalence. Mass is usually expressed as energy in Giga Volts and theory will predict a given mass for a particle and colliders test for that by dialing in a specific energy level.

More on the details of this can be found here:

Particle Detection

Thanks. It gives me a rough idea. So, if the Higgs or a posited particle is found, how would we expect to recreate it to understand more about it? Would it be through similar collisions as the one which helped discover it?

"It is the energy deposited into the calorimeter from these interactions that is measured."

That is from the physics.org link. If the energy is measured, how does that exactly tell us the Higgs has been discovered? I imagine it would have certain characteristics from the collisions unique to it (as per the proposed model), but what exactly?

Is there any reason to believe we could expect the detection of the graviton also soon?

I think it is determined by the energy of the collision, but I suspect that they use other clues.

As for graviton discovery, who knows. It is proposed that gravitons are massless spin-2 particles. They seem quite elusive, but this PDF link might be of some interest.

Prof. Matt Strassler of Rutgers University has a new Blog that gives excellent Higgs info for all levels of readers.

I particularly liked this snippet from a comment he posted on his latest summary: "Personally I think there is quite a decent chance that they have found it. I can make a strong argument in its favor. I can also see places where I can pull on a loose end and the whole thing unravels."

Well, this seems to have more substance to it than superluminal neutrinos. ;-)

Why so?

Because:

1. the degree of certainty is very high for Higgs,
2. theory for Higgs' mass matches the experiment very well,
3. there is a great deal more experimental data backing up the Higgs finding
4. The superluminal neutrino observation is totally unexpected and unexplained and there is no high degree of certainty that what we observed was observed correctly.

Read my post # 6 for a little more insight as to why I believe the Higgs finding to be true.

As for the neutrino observation, well, it is quite exciting, too, but we need a lot more information before we can pass judgement.

If the superluminal nuetrino experiment is true, then wouldn't it mean that we would have to alter our present understanding of physics? Because it would be impossible for a particle to speed over the speed of light (its mass would expand to infinity as it does too).

I didn't follow-up on their experiments, two of which stated that the neutrinos did travel faster than light. Did another report come which spoke of an error in that experiment.

...and we may be going off-topic here, I apologize.

Hi Jay, don't worry about off-topic here, because every particle with mass is somehow linked to the Higgs.

Tachyons are supposed to be created faster than light (ftl), so they do not have to cross that barrier. This is more or less standard relativistic particle physics.

But, if it were indeed neutrinos with a tiny real mass that did the Opera ftl thing, they needed some help from another dimension or a tricky "jump into the bulk", as discussed here.

Jorrie, thanks for the link. It goes to a blog by Tommaso Dorigo, and he then provides numerous other links to more detailed info.

It being a blog article, Tommaso includes personal opinion along with a factual account. The blog included this statement, which I thought was kind of odd - though at least Tommaso admitted he was letting his opinion mix in with the facts:

"...Matt Strassler in his article about the Higgs today stresses that I am badly wrong on calling this a "firm evidence". Oh well - that's my opinion, and I believe I am entitled to it. He has a point (in a later comment in the thread) when he says that my prior beliefs are somewhat intermingled with my conclusions, but I think that is sincerely unavoidable if you ask people for their real opinion on something, rather than a dull scientific "uninformative" answer."

'dull scientific "uninformative" answer.' -- Really?

My understanding is that the degree of certainty of the evidence is in the very high 90 percentile. The ATLAS detection has been given a 3.5-sigma certainty and the CMS result has been given a 2.5-sigma certainty. That represents a 99.9% certainty and a 99.0% certainty respectively.

That may seem like commanding evidence, and it is, but in order to qualify as a discovery we need a 5-sigma certainty to formally be called a discovery.

My rather lowly opinion is that this is not a fluke and we will get a formal discovery in due course. The Higgs is real.

I wrote in the OP: "The full implications for particle physics, cosmology and relativity must still sink in, but I think there are many - so watch this space."

Nothing too official has been forthcoming, because officials seem to wait for better certainty. However, the Blogosphere is already abuzz with possibilities. One of the most tantalizing (for me, at least), is that the discovery hints at the reality of a "Higgs aether", something similar the "Einstein aether".⁽¹⁾

Sascha Vongehr wrote:

"Orthodoxy about Einstein's general relativity has for about a whole century now academically lynched anybody for mentioning the evil ether. The ether, also "Einstein-Aether", is the idea that relativity emerges inside a fluid like space-substance that lives through time. This is very much disliked by all those who almost religiously believe in the dogma of abstract geometrical space-time. The Higgs boson is an excitation of the Higgs field, and that Higgs field is what gives some of the more fundamental particles like electrons their mass. This is why the Higgs field is also called Higgs-ether!"

Wow!

This does not mean Einstein's relativity is wrong or that the 'fixed aether' proponents are right, but more something like:

"The Higgs field possibly has the same uniform value v everywhere. Since it is a so called "scalar field", it is also the same to every observer, regardless of how fast she moves relative to the average star background. Particles see the same Higgs field regardless of their motion."

I'm still trying, without getting too dizzy, to wrap my head around all this.

-J

(1) http://www.science20.com/alpha_meme/higgs_discovery_rehabilitating_despised_einstein_ether-85497

.

I quoted Vongehr: "The Higgs field possibly has the same uniform value v everywhere. Since it is a so called "scalar field", it is also the same to every observer, regardless of how fast she moves relative to the average star background. Particles see the same Higgs field regardless of their motion."

I cannot help wondering if this is not how, as Einstein reportedly said, "nature conspires against us" to prevent us from detecting absolute motion. Every particle and observer moving relative to each other demonstrably have their own 'private' rate of time and measure of distance, but all inertial frames still remain equivalent.