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Okay, (non-scientist, complete buffoon alert!) I understand - kind of - the significance of the Higgs Boson particle, but answer me this someone (in very simple terms please! )

How the bloody hell are those boffins over at the LHC going to know if they have found one or not? How exactly will they know if a Higgs Boson particle has put in an appearance?

Mind boggling!

Those clever CERN folk have even produced their own rap :- http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM

srod wrote:Okay, (non-scientist, complete buffoon alert!) I understand - kind of - the significance of the Higgs Boson particle, but answer me this someone (in very simple terms please! )

How the bloody hell are those boffins over at the LHC going to know if they have found one or not? How exactly will they know if a Higgs Boson particle has put in an appearance?

Mind boggling!

Not really. When they collide the two particle beams in the LHC they will actually be creating sort of a miniature Big Bang, or so they hope. The LHC should be powerful enough to do it anyway. In that explosion Higgs boson particles has to exist if the standard model is correct, so what they look for is particles that isn't already identified and has certain expected qualities that fit the profile.

(And just to clearify, yes, I do believe they will find it as I do believe the standard model is correct. But it would be so much more fun if it wasn't! Not out of spite but because the standard model does impose restrictions on the universe that the Sci-Fi side of me isn't prepared to accept )

On finding a particle then that 'fits the profile' can they then be certain that it is indeed a Higgs Boson particle and not some other previously unknown particle?

Talk about being at the cutting edge - these physicist guys are amazing!

srod wrote:On finding a particle then that 'fits the profile' can they then be certain that it is indeed a Higgs Boson particle and not some other previously unknown particle?

Well, if it fits the profile that has been theorised for the Higgs boson particle, then the particle is the Higgs boson

Talk about being at the cutting edge - these physicist guys are amazing!

Indeed they are!! Nerds rule!!!!

I reckon they'd find a Higgs Boson tucked away in my sofa somewhere! God knows there's just about everything else trapped in there!

srod wrote:

I reckon they'd find a Higgs Boson tucked away in my sofa somewhere! God knows there's just about everything else trapped in there!

I'll inform them that your sofa probably is the optimal place to direct the resulting Big Bang to...

DarkDragon wrote: We discuss this on the German board for a few months now.

It's also a popular thread in the Off Topic section on the Steam forums.

milan1612 wrote:The purpose is to accelerate few atoms up to almost the speed of light and letting them collide.

True, however I've heard that since this is a hadron accelerator and because all the hadron particles are in the nucleus of the atom, it will only be accelerating the nucleus of the atoms and not the electrons. How they manage that I have no clue.

milan1612 wrote:The fears of some critics are based on the apprehension the atoms could fuse together creating a very small black hole which then could destroy the earth

Even if a very small black hole was created, it would only have the mass of a few sub-atomic particles and gravity is a very weak force. It could take decades or even centuries before it would have any noticeable effect. And if the Hawking radiation theory is correct, it would evaporate very soon after it was created due to lack of enough mass to draw in more material than it throws off in the form of radiation. At least that's my understanding of it anyway.

maw wrote:We have been accelerating particle beams for many, many years.

And colliding them too. Just never on a scale this large.

BTW maw, have you seen the sequel to "War Games" yet?

From what little I understand, the higgs boson is (if it exists) everywhere, just never detected. The key thing about this particle is that its the one that gives substance mass. So believing that E=MC^2 means that mass and energy are basically the same thing and can be converted from one to the other. The other 12 (?) sub attomic particles in the standard theory have no mass and so it's theorised that a particle exists that will bring all this together.

I guess they are hoping that if they don't find the higgs, they are going to be able to disprove the higgs and re work their theories or find something else that will lead to a more complete understanding.

In the end, the theories are heading towards matter and energy all being the same thing but they haven't been about to consolidate this yet into complete theories the explain the workings correctly. (There's still bugs in their code but it's starting to look pretty good for the bits that do work )

Personally I don't know what all the fuss is about ,I've been playing with LHC's for years, was even married to one for a while but got divorced when I discovered that bozo higgs was playing in my LHC (ladies hardon collider) !

I'm personally looking forward to the launch of this. I really look forward to reading about their findings as a result of these experiments and hopefully it will increase our understanding of the universe.

Heathen wrote:I'm personally looking forward to the launch of this. I really look forward to reading about their findings as a result of these experiments and hopefully it will increase our understanding of the universe.

I watched this morning on BBC 24hr news live, as they gradually switched the beam through the various 8 segments and finally completely around the ring. Really exciting stuff. It's going to be very interesting to see what new and wonderful discoveries (and potential applications) will come from this in the years ahead

We all DIED!!! OMG!!! It was the end of the whirled!!! I miss you guys!!!

I mean, Texas survived... of course!

And we have formed a new world government that refuses to let overly fertile Governors from Alaska (which is also gone) on the VP ticket!

{snif}

Y'all were so nice... Why? WHY???

Who the heck cares about he Big Bang... it happened so long ago!!!

Most of the people on this board were not even born yet!!!

It's not that they want to know more... All i'm upset about is that this thing will most probably be transformed into a weapon, just like with everything else (nuclear power for example).