Higgs Hunting News
Posted by Adam Yurkewicz on 17 Feb 2009 at 03:25 pm
Physicists at the Tevatron made news at the AAAS meeting in Chicago by announcing an estimate of the chances of finding evidence for the Higgs boson at Fermilab in the next few years. And they claim the chances are quite good, as you can see in the plot above.
The chances depend very strongly on the actual mass of the Higgs boson, which no one knows. Depending on what the mass of the Higgs boson is, it will decay into other particles that are easier or harder for an experiment to detect. So for example if the mass turns out to be about 170 GeV, the Tevatron experiments say their chances are almost 100 percent of finding it by 2011. If the mass turns out to really be 135 GeV, the chances are below 30 percent.
The articles I’ve seen on this topic always play up the angle that the LHC and Tevatron teams are in a competition or race, which is definitely true to some extent. But I for one am certainly not rooting against the Tevatron!
First of all, many people are part of both Tevatron and LHC experiments. I, for example, was part of a Fermilab experiment, DZero, for about 7 years, and I would feel proud if DZero found the Higgs boson. Second, all of us want to know if there is a Higgs boson and what it looks like, so to speak, and have wanted to know for a very long time. If the Higgs boson is discovered, we will all be celebrating, no matter who discovers it. Finally, there is plenty of great physics coming at the LHC that the Tevatron has no hope of doing, and wasn’t designed to do. If the Higgs boson is found at the Tevatron, it doesn’t diminish the excitement of what is to come at the LHC. If anything, it would make us more eager to see what else there is. So I am rooting for the Tevatron!
[...] Adam Yurkewicz has the scoop, and you should go there for more info. But this graph tells the basic story. It’s the probability that Fermilab will be able to find “three-sigma” evidence for the Higgs, depending on what its mass is, if the Tevatron gets to run through 2011. [...]
[...] here to read the rest: US LHC Blog » Higgs Hunting News Share and [...]
Fermilab vs. CERN?…
Forscher vom Fermilab sagen: Die Chance das Higgs bereits am Tevatron zu finden liege bei 50%…
I doubt the higgs exist. Personally, I feel the higgs is an article of faith, not science. Even Frank Wilczek implies the search for the higgs is futile…
“Particle physicists are desperate to find the Higgs particle, which is widely regarded as a missing piece of their “Standard Model” of fundamental particles and forces. Currently, all their hopes are pinned on CERN’s “Large Hadron Collider” which, when completed in 2008, will be the world’s most energetic particle accelerator. If the LHC finds the Higgs, the relief among physicists will be palpable. Almost certainly they will declare to every newspaper and TV station that they have found the elusive origin of mass. However, according to Wilczek, this will be an exaggeration of the truth. “You have to be very clear about exactly what the Higgs mechanism does and does not explain,” he says.
The Higgs mechanism does not in any sense “explain” the actual values of the masses of the fundamental particles. For instance, it does not explain why the top-quark has roughly a million times the mass of the electron. In the Higgs theory, the value of the mass of a particular particle depends on how well the Higgs “treacle” sticks to it. The stickiness is encapsulated in a number called a “coupling constant”, which is different for each particle and, worst still, must be inserted into the theory by hand simply to make the masses come out right.Even if the Higgs mechanism is accepted as an explanation of mass, it has an another, rather embarrassing, shortcoming. It can account for hardly any of the mass of ordinary matter” – http://www.calphysics.org/articles/chown2007.html
Quantum processing and cellular automata is where it’s at if you REALLY want to rapidly fill in the missing blanks to the periodic table of elements…
“computer science/ sets/ formal systems are taking over where theoretical physics has been sort of stagnating-simply because we have the technology to run ever more complex toy universes on computers [with total physical equivalence between simulations and the 'real' world projected by most computer scientists within only decades http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/computeruniverse.html- this is the concept behind what Wolfram calls "A New kind of Science" that started with Turing/ Von Neumann/ Zuse/Feynman but is now exploding due to the exponentiation of computing technology- so it hardly matters if physicists are still clinging to String Theory or if they turn to LQG- at the end of the day it is computer scientists and mathematicians who are advancing the actual WORK now-"
"most classical and quantum computer scientists expect to see something like Strings [or spinfoams] emerge from cellular automata at the proper scales- however it is not the abstract statistical models of the output of the CA that corresponds to our universe which will be printed as a TOE on t-shirts- but the CA’s description ITSELF…
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=164723
We already have a theories, like Heim’s theory, which are capable to predictions of most of particle properties in many orders of precision. No accelerator experiments in such dangerous arrangement are really necessary for further evolution of physics. Instead of it, we should save money for cold fusion research to be able to arrange them in free cosmic space.
http://superstruny.aspweb.cz/images/fyzika/heim.gif
Will the unified theory be not a short equation but a short computer program? Yes. Will today’s Periodic Table of Elements be replaced with a cellular automata by tomorrow’s science? Yes. http://www.mtnmath.com/
“It always bothers me that, according to the laws as we understand them today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is going to do? So I have often made the hypotheses that ultimately physics will not require a mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed, and the laws will turn out to be simple, like the chequer board with all its apparent complexities.
-Richard Feynman in The Character of Physical Law, page 57.
Einstein’s celebrated formula E=mc² has finally been corroborated, thanks to “computational” efforts NOT “particle accelerators”… http://www.physorg.com/news146415074.html
Outdated Newtonian thinking still dominates modern physics. The Higgs Boson Particle Isn’t a Particle – Why the Search for Subatomic Particles is an Illusion: http://www.naturalnews.com/025486.html
Alternatives: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126884.400-desktop-atom-smashers-could-replace-lhc.html?full=true
LHC outdated? https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/news_releases/2008/NR-08-11-03.html
Pebble-Bed Reactor technology is in its infancy, and extensive development of this science would allow for far more usage of nuclear reactors in lieu of fossil fuels.
Thorium Reactor technology is in its infancy and extensive development of Thorium capability would allow for current Source Material mines to fuel mankind for centuries.
Deuterium-Deuterium fusion has the potential to solve all energy problems of mankind. Two routes have shown some success – namely magnetic confinement fusion, and inertial confinement fusion [aka static, or ‘cold’ fusion]. Currently, these areas have too few physicists working on those lines. This should be a high-priority for dedicated physicists.
Where is Richard Feynman when you really need the guy, anyway? Feynman
was one physicist who wasn’t afraid to go after the establishment
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman#Challenger_disaster
http://arxivblog.com/?p=1150
What Higgs? The Higgs and SUSY partners are mathematical excrescences of defective physical theory. The universe assumes no debt toward the composition of nut mixes at a desired price modeled with quadratic equations suffering a negative root.
No Super-Kamiokande proton decay, no axion telescope discovery, no dark matter detection, no Higgs, no SUSY. Something deep within physics is selectively wrong. The disjoint non-overlap of metric gravitation and teleparallelism offes a candidate. Perform a parity Eötvös experiment opposing enantiomorphic space groups P3(1)21 and P3(2)21 single crystal quartz test masses. The proper test of spacetime geometry is mass distribution geometry – strictly a lab scenario.
Wow Higgs deniers! lol
I have a question about the much anticipated 2009/2010 LHC collision run. The Chamonix announcement said that the LHC would run at 5 Tev/beam (about 70% of design energy)and have a 200 pb-1 luminosity for the approx 1 yr run. Is this the at the full design instantanious luminosity of 10^34 cm-2s-1 or some derated value?
May the particle scientists have painted themselves into a corner?
The physicists have become so fond of the Standard Model that the Higgs boson just ‘has to’ exist. 6 kinds of quarks and the strong and the weak nuclear force are taken for granted, even though none of them have been unambiguously or directly detected.
Is it about time to give new thoughts a chance? Maybe take a look at some of the ‘crackpot’-ideas, even if just to realize that is possible to think differently…
E.g. http://classicalatom.blogspot.com
[...] More on #Higgs hunting: http://blogs.uslhc.us/?p=866 [...]
Harbles,
The instantaneous luminosity will be more like 10^31 for the first few months, and then hopefully up to 10^32 for the rest of the 2009/2010 run. Probably not higher than that.
And Heim predicted the neutrino masses 20 years ago when many physicists still thought they had zero mass: http://www.heim-theory.com/downloads/G_Selected_Results.pdf
Until now, Heim’s unified field theory must be considered the most successful one, since in physics there are no better results for the properties of elementary particles yet, since Higgs-bosons have not yet been found and physical properties of strings can not yet be determined. Therefore, it should to be checked by specialists. Since this theory requires exceptional mathematical knowledge, Heim’s theory is only accessible to few theorists. But the many results of this theory which correspond with experiments, in our opinion, justify all efforts of a preoccupation with it – contrary to many other modern theoretical ideas.
So Heim theory, with the mass formula nd artificial gravity predictions, has already many more predictions than String theory or Loop Quantum gravity (who have essentially no concrete easily measurable predicitons).
Heim got another shot in the arm (well his successors, as he died some years ago) recently when Martin Tajmar discovered what seems to be artificial gravity, more or less confirmed by a group in Canterbury, NZ, and the ‘anomalous’ results of the Gravity Probe B satellite. Droscher and Hauser found that Heim’s gravito-photons could explain this, as his theory has just 2 extra forces compared to the usual 4, both gravitational: this gravito-magnetism via gravito-photons and a weaker long range force, resembling dark energy. Heim’s theory predicts a way to improve on Tajmar’s effect that could lead to a new space drive. Tajmar quotes the HEim mechanism as one of 2 or 3 candidate theories of his effect, in his papers (search Arxiv etc.).
[...] like this, the intense rivalry (or friendly jockying) between CERN and Fermilab becomes clearer. Yet, the two organisations must, for knowledge’s [...]
I hesitate to contribute to Jason B.’s hijack, but I feel compelled to at least comment that if the Higgs mechanism really were an “article of faith”, there wouldn’t be so many scientists going to such great lengths to test it. That’s the great thing about science — even when almost everyone is convinced a theory is right, they still recognize the value in proving it (in as much as any empirical truth can be proven.) Of course, there are also other benefits of finding the Higgs boson besides just confirming the theory — such as determining its mass.
Also, the fact that the Higgs mechanism doesn’t “explain” why particles have their particular masses does not make the theory wrong, just as the fact that quantum electrodynamics doesn’t predict the charge of an electron doesn’t make it wrong. Some things you have to measure.
I don’t know anything about “Heim theory” so I can’t comment on that — other than to say that it seems rather off topic for this blog posting.
Getting back on topic, I have two questions:
(1) Does the above plot apply equally well if we have a single standard model Higgs vs multiple Higgs bosons as in supersymmetric theories? And if there are multiple Higgs, is there any chance the Tevatron might find the heavier of the two first? (I mean, since the detection probability actually increases with mass until we get to 165 Gev or so).
(2) Is it possible to create a similar plot for how likely the LHC is to find the Higgs (vs. Higgs mass) after a given amount of run time? Or is this impossible for some reason? (e.g., not enough known about the efficiency of the detectors at the LHC?) If it is possible, has anyone attempted to create such an estimate?
TimG,
(1) The plot is just for the standard model case. It is trickier in supersymmetric theories since there are more free parameters that influence the Higgs mass. The Tevatron people are also looking for supersymmetric Higgs.
(2) Yes, although I haven’t seen exactly that. Estimates of how long it will take the LHC to pass the Tevatron in terms of sensitivity went into the recent discussions about the plans for the LHC in 2009-2010. I think the bottom line is that the LHC probably won’t pass the Tevatron before 2011.
Adam, thanks for the answers.
Those interested in a critical viewpoint may have a look at:
the article: http://arxiv.org/ftp/hep-ph/papers/0102/0102268.pdf
the presentation: http://personales.ya.com/sardin/lhc-i.pps
the YouTube load: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQrIuu31pFA
[...] Sources: [1] PowerPedia:Aether – PESWiki [2] The Origin of Mass? ” The Everything Seminar [3] Chowk: Science: Search for the God Particle [4] List of particles – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [5] Large Hadron Collider – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [6] US LHC Blog ” Higgs Hunting News [...]
Ahem.
Is it just me that can see a side profile of a babe with her knees up (on the right) and a pointy chest (on the left)?
Or do I need to up my medication?
Hello.
I am from the future and will tell you that there is no Higgs Boson. He made it up as a joke because no one could explain gravity or mass.
Heim is correct. The discovery of gravito-photons will occur in 4 years. Force field beams will follow, both attractive and repulsive.
Physics has wrongly sought to understand the nature of “matter” instead of the not-matter in which ‘matter’ exists. Ask yourself, what is the nature of empty space?
Then you will make progress in physics.