I was trying to relax in front of the tv, watching TNT’S Mentalist marathon, when the news somehow got to me that the Higgs Boson has been found.
They call it “the god particle,” physicists do.
These physicists have a “Standard Model” a theory of , well, everything, which they adhere to..
The Higgs boson is the last piece of the physics Standard Model
(a collection of theories that underpin all modern physics).
The Higgs particle is theorized to mediate mass –
like a photon (also a boson) mediates the electromagnetic force, i.e., light –
and creates the "Higgs field" that must pervade the entire Universe, endowing matter with mass
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The Higgs field can be pictured as a pool of molasses that "sticks" to the otherwise massless fundamental particles that travel through the field, converting them into particles with mass that form (for example) the components of atoms. Its quantum would be a scalar boson, known as the Higgs boson .
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All clear so far?
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It has been a long time since I went on one of my manic ‘physics kicks’’ so I must warn you that I am very ignorant about the latest speculations & theories & experiments our physicist friends have been doing.
Once upon a time, though, I knew my stuff. Please indulge me as I fake it. Often, faking knowledge you once had firmly in memory leads to recovery of this knowledge, with a few errors thrown in certainly. I have no pride when it comes to being criticized for my Knowledge. Because I know that deep down, somewhere , I have Wisdom. Which is what you do with your knowledge.
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You are probably wondering who the heck this Higgs is, who has a “god particle “ named after him. Well, he was one of six physicists who were seriously on the case of this latest speculation in Physics. Six authors were also awarded the 2010 J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics for this work.[22] (A dispute also arose the same year; in the event of a Nobel Prize up to 3 scientists would be eligible, with 6 authors credited for the papers.[23] ) Two of the three PRL papers (by Higgs and by GHK) contained equations for the hypothetical field that would eventually become known as the Higgs field and its hypothetical quantum, the Higgs boson.
Higgs' subsequent 1966 paper showed the decay mechanism of the boson; only a massive boson can decay and the decays can prove the mechanism.”
And that is why it is a Higgs boson.
Higgs is an atheist, and is displeased that the Higgs particle is nicknamed the "God particle",[73] because the term "might offend people who are religious".[74]
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This is a sincere open call to all of you who know what the hell these guys are talking about.
I need to know: Has history been made, today?
I know I am inviting an very nerdy passionate conversation here, but this is the thing:
I trust you guys, or gals, to tell me what it all means…
My intitial attitude is this: perhaps the substructure of the physical universe has been found.
But there is more than the physical universe, I firmly believe.
I don’t know what it is “made of”, except..perhaps..thought?.....
“To be perceived is to be” a la Bishop Berkeley?
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The thought, the idea, of this “higgs boson” is a nonphysical event in a physical universe we may have finally figure out. But where on Earth does that leave us?
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theig86
Diane Letulle
Geraint Isitt
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Comments
2. I am clueless. But there is more than the Standard Model. Something called Supersymmetry. Like anti-matter. It seems to be losing.
i dunno about strings.
fractals are fascinating to me too. they remind me of my brain.
how they reproduce endlessly......to...what purpose.?
some will say 'PURPOSE " has no place in this discussion.
i humbly gotta disagree.
Ah but that is only for like, teeney eeny teeny things!
I think it is all about privacy for these particles……………
Well then , old boy, reality=observation: “ Observation tweaks the outcome and you only think you maybe saw what you think you saw. “
I agree in principle, but infinity doesn’t much bother me:
“ the result is infinite, something that's beyond comprehension and leaves us all feeling so insignificant that we throw up our hands and say WTF!!”
I do feel insignificant until I am told
By mystics
And physicists
That the center of the universe? It is here.
It is everywhere & nowhere.
As I suspected.
i wish i knew if it was 'true' but then again
i got my own subjective ideas of
'true''.
etc. thank u!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1MORMONGAL
u say our national motto gotta be changed, i
say well reasoned! the f-ing fathers would have loved it.
j
More godly a boson than Higgs can be
It’s eluded us for fifty years
And only on circular drives appears
Now that it’s known to all shores
Whose god was honored, mine or yours?
(The foregoing inspired by haiku I heard today on NPR)
To me, both the religious and the scientific explanations are metaphors for reality, which means in my book they all hold aspects of the truth.
Yes, they do think they've found a Higgs like particle, a little lower mass than they expected, but still, spinning like a boson. All the sub-atomic particles spin, you know.
For me, the discovery of Higgs Bosons kind of lend credence to the New Thought laws of attraction, that thought actually can affect matter; that the ideas of things help create and maintain and destroy things.
I know, how can a subatomic particle have feelings.
But an infinite field of them that permeates the entire universe?
How could it NOT love us?
(The superstring thing is a different issue, like gravity. Much less understood. To me, the supersymmatry leads to an answer for the problem of good and evil (antimater decays faster, thus, good always defeats evil) and gravity is a choice, or love.
A poetic interpretation of physics, which is itself an interpretation of experience, and subject to the influence of observation.
We also saw the Higgs because we wanted to see it. We make God, and God makes us.
It's all so wonderful, life.
cuz i couldn't do math
but the physics teacher was my favorite and I so wanted to take her class
i fell in love with the exhole mostly
because he was a physicist
i can't imagine how particles can not have mass so this is all lost on me
maybe someday I'll take the time to
see if i can
learn physics from youtube
every time they think they've got to the
bottom of things
they find out later they haven't
there's more
remember mork from ork falling into the drop of water
seemingly forever?
is emmerling rubbing off on me?
then again....mebbe not...
Lezlie
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i am utterly fascinated by all your comments, and though
unfortunately not a damn one of them
made me understand this enormous event
of finding (maybe) the Higgs boson,
though have set my brain afire, with metaphorical animistic
sort of thoughts about "matter"/
.........
the reason i think it is real is a lunatic one.
see, a team in the usa ALSO simultaneously found it.
If any of you know o f the history of Science,
as i sketchily do, you know that
when something big happens
there are more than one
"team" or person
that discovers it.
evidence? you ask? oh, evolution...
and ......CALCULUS! nEWTON & lEIBNIZ!
at the bikinis, but...i brought some newspapers, so as to appear
intellectual...ouch, my back hurts..shoulda used more sunscreen, ay!
anyway,
here's the scoop on why this is important.
IT TELLS US WHY
THERE IS SUCH A THING AS 'MATTER'/
And that is : because these various particles gotta go through
a "field" , which can be envisioned as molasses.
as they zip along, they
pick up
"mass".
ok?
now, photons do not . pick up mass. they are massless.
they are light particles.
ah but the speed of light is the universe's arbitrary speed limit,
So …they gotta be special.
Turns out there are 12 kinds of particles.
Bosons are the ones that CONVEY FORCE. Like..e.m force, gravitational force, weak & strong force..
There is this field, then, that the nascent particles, ever be aborning, existing a bit , then decaying or colliding into other particles,
gotta slug through.
……………….
It is this Higg’s Field.
Photons don’t respond to it, cuz they are special and damn stubborn.
The others do, though.
In the response , they…get…heavy, baby.