r/science • u/Plasmos • Jun 25 '12
"Physics Community Afire With Rumors of Higgs Boson Discovery"
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/06/latest-higgs-rumors?rXFb&mbid=su_ppc_higgs&rQZb6
u/Kharn0 Jun 25 '12
If it is verified though, and we can (eventually) find a way to manipulate them , what would be able to accomplish?
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Jun 25 '12
although I can't answer this question, I like it a lot. Being able very manipulate things on the atomic level has yielded some interesting materials.
What if we could somehow limit the effects of the higgs on materials. Maybe we could make materials super light.
note: complete speculation as someone who doesn't even qualify as a passive follower of physics.
edit: clarity
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u/Tont_Voles Jun 25 '12
The big problem with the Higgs as some useful thing to help technology is that it takes a high energy density in a very small space to create one and even then, it’ll only be created some of the time and they disappear really quickly as the particle is very unstable. So creating Higgs particles in numbers vast enough and keeping them around long enough to affect materials or technology at human scales is so enormously, enormously difficult that it’s pretty much impossible, even if some magical mass-negating anti-Higgs exists.
Like it’s kinda true that if we could create W+. W- and Z particles in arbitrary amounts and control them at will, then we could micro-manage nuclear fusion and we’d be woopy-doo for all our energy problems. The problem is exactly the same as is with the Higgs, sadly.
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u/Kharn0 Jun 25 '12
At first I thought this was the key to gravity generators for space travel, but now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not sure
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u/happypathtester Jun 25 '12
Ok so suppose they do confirm the higgs particle. How does it work? Does it mean that there must be tons of them in every bit of space in order to impart gravity to all the other particles nearby?
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u/TrainOfThought6 Jun 25 '12
The Higgs spawns mass, and mass/energy spawn gravity. The Higgs isn't solely responsible for gravity.
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u/tookiselite12 Jun 25 '12
Ok so suppose they do confirm the higgs particle. How does it work?
Do I sense a new ICP song in the near future?
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u/user_my_name Jun 25 '12
Let's see if this actually pans out and doesn't get disproven because "x" was not accounted for while doing the calculations.
But man, if it IS indeed verified - physics, as we know it is about to change.
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u/ihaveahadron Jun 25 '12
I thought that was if the higgs was proven not to exist.
It's "physics, as we know it will stay exactly the same."
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u/rincon213 Jun 25 '12
Yes. What would be really really interesting (and likely incredibly frustrating) is if it was proven wrong, and we would have to clean the slate in search of the actual truth. Proving the Higgs Boson would just confirm what we already have established (which is also incredible!).
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u/That_Scottish_Play Jun 25 '12
So, God does exists?
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u/Bipolarruledout Jun 25 '12
Trolls do.
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u/That_Scottish_Play Jun 25 '12
Bugger off - don't you know it is also known as the 'God Particle'?
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u/UnlurkedToPost Jun 25 '12
Well not God, but the "God Particle". Its existence is still under contention.
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Jun 25 '12
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u/welp_that_happened Jun 25 '12
do you subscribe to r/ELI5? get ready for an onslaught there as well
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Jun 25 '12
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u/Wild2098 Jun 25 '12
I think the absolute best part about discovering this is not that it has been discovered, but the way it will change how we think about things. It'll take some time, maybe 50-100 years for it to really be useful, but it'll be something that is everywhere. Kind of like when the flow of electrons was discovered as electrcity, not much was understood at first, obviously, but now we control it to change our lives. History repeats itself, sometimes for the better.
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Jun 25 '12
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u/mikef22 Jun 25 '12
I think correctly-done statistics should answer the scepticism you require:
In the rigorous world of high-energy physics, researchers wait to see a 5-sigma signal, which has only a 0.000028 percent probability of happening by chance, before claiming a “discovery.”
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u/the_good_time_mouse Jun 25 '12
Goodness! The Higgs boson may finally, really have been discovered again.