Article

2012-03-08 Science & Technology

Fermilab physicists are close on elusive Higgs boson particle

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Posted by Besoeker 2012-03-08 02:58|| || Front Page|| [11125 views ] Top

#1 Unfortunately this is probably as close as we're going to get, because there's no more data and the heroic efforts to wring more precision out of the data are, while not completely exhausted, not likely to improve things much.

The Fermilab p-pbar collider would create Higgs (if it did) with largely different production mechanisms than CERN's p-p collider, and of course the detectors are different, so these are independent measurements. That makes the results more powerful than they look--both sets of groups are independently validating each other's conclusions.

Posted by James 2012-03-08 07:54|| http://idontknowbut.blogspot.com 2012-03-08 07:54|| Front Page Top

#2 It's always good to get the perspective of a professional working in the field. Thank you, James.

Posted by trailing wife 2012-03-08 08:43|| 2012-03-08 08:43|| Front Page Top

#3 Higgs has been so elusive that it has generated some very interesting theories, which even if far fetched, raise the bar of future inquiry.

One that is interesting to ponder is what if gravity is not a physical thing at all, but is "virtual", caused by distortions of space-time by mass-energy?

This may overlap with a different theory that Higgs exist, just not entirely in space-time, perhaps like dark matter.

Posted by Anonymoose 2012-03-08 09:37|| 2012-03-08 09:37|| Front Page Top

#4 is the pbar also known as the "Negatron"? If not, why not?

Hell of a super-villan name, as well.

Posted by mojo 2012-03-08 10:46|| 2012-03-08 10:46|| Front Page Top

#5 Why is this so hard to find? It's probably near a military base in Pakistain.

Posted by gorb 2012-03-08 12:21|| 2012-03-08 12:21|| Front Page Top

#6 Mojo: Electrons used to be called negatrons. Here is a picture of an old Negatron tube.

The Scott-Taggart Negatron oscillator from 1921.

Posted by Anonymoose 2012-03-08 12:58|| 2012-03-08 12:58|| Front Page Top

#7 Typical article that tries to say something about nothing.

In essence, they can't prove that it exists, and have no positive evidence that it exists. All they are willing to say (but not willing to "bet the house on it") is that the particle, by theory, should exist in a space generated by the experimental capabilities of the two particle accelerators available to four different teams (two per device). The teams results, all pulled together, indicate that the particle is definitely NOT in the searches of regions of that space. They have extrapolated from their own search rate of that space to predict that the entire space will be covered competely by the end of 2012.

Posted by Ptah 2012-03-08 13:13|| 2012-03-08 13:13|| Front Page Top

#8 They all ar on the wrong track. What they should be looking for is a bozon, like in bozonic.

Posted by Alaska Paul 2012-03-08 22:21|| 2012-03-08 22:21|| Front Page Top

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