Place Your Bets: Will Physicists Find The "God Particle"?

Thank you onevoiceamongmany,

Actually even if they find nothing it will open up whole new realms of possibilities that haven't seriously been considered in the scientific community.

To completely let go of the standard model of cosmology is no small feat for physicists and it may result in a paradigm shift as far as how we define the roots and paths of knowledge. I think that history will be made one way or the other in the near future.

(chuckle), I know that a great number of physicists despise the label "God Particle". But I believe that it has it's upsides. I ran across a more recent Guardian article where I think that the author puts it perfectly...

"I know scientists hate the name God particle, and it's hard to disagree with any of their reasons for objecting. But I can't help thinking they should lighten up a little. The name has stuck for a reason. At the very least, Lederman boosted the chances of particle physics being written about by the lay media. That has to be good news for the public, who pay for these giant machines to be built, and for the wages of many of those working on them." (Source: link )

I'd make a side wager that a few religious minded people who aren't really interested in science have taken a moment to read articles who's headlines contain the words "God Particle" and ended up learning a little something about modern physics. Now how can that be a bad thing?

I think we're going back to the drawing board on this one. But I also think that the next few years will be very interesting, indeed.

Agreed and agreed.

I'm skeptical too, although for different reasons.

Now that's just wrong. I'm no physicist however I am extremely curious about everything so I do a lot of reading and I ask a lot of questions. Please expand on your reasons for skepticism. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

:-)

"....After all, it's possible that it's already been discovered, but the sheer mass of data to be analyzed will take some time to wade through."

I can only imagine that there is a ton of data to process. Thanks for your input.

Or that these experiments don't cause the entire planet to blackout followed by everyone seeing flashes of their future. After regaining consciousness everyone struggles to make sense of their destiny and the idea of free will...

The Black out ( link )

;-)

This reminds me of that old hippie song (yes, I know that I'm dating myself) "this is the dawning of the age of Aquarius". Supposedly this is a time of enlightenment, new thinking and new ideas. It kind of makes sense in our age of information...

Durham, northern England, December 2009. The largest meeting of particle physicists in the country is underway and James Wells, a leading theorist at Cern, the European nuclear research organisation near Geneva, is beguiling his audience with an idea that has all the makings of the next great revolution in science...

... Particle physicists have a problem, he says. They are an anthropocentric bunch, too preoccupied with the particles and forces that impinge on humanity. They have spent so much time unravelling mysteries such as the structure of atoms and why the sun shines that they have neglected other avenues of inquiry. They need to broaden their horizons, Wells says. To think beyond the world we see and touch...

...Our knowledge of nature and how it works is based on observations. What if we can't see everything? What might we be missing out on? There could be a "hidden world" out there, Wells says, where particles and forces are busily at work, all around us, but beyond the realm of our senses...

...The idea of a hidden world might sound absurd, but physicists have good reason to believe it exists. Even with today's most advanced telescopes, astronomers can see only 4% of what makes up our cosmic neighbourhood. The rest is invisible to us, revealing itself only by the effects it has on the galaxies we can see. Around 70% of the unseen universe is labelled as "dark energy", a mysterious force that drives the expansion of the universe, making galaxies race away from us. The remaining quarter is chalked up as "dark matter", an obscure substance that clings to galaxies and exerts an unmistakable gravitational pull on them. The word "dark" means we cannot see it, but it also means scientists haven't the faintest clue what it is...

....The uncertainty over what exists in the hidden world has done nothing to dampen physicists' enthusiasm for the idea. John March-Russell, a theoretical physicist at Oxford University, says proof of a hidden world could become the central plank of a scientific revolution that rivals any in history. When Copernicus put the sun at the centre of the solar system in the 16th century, and when Charles Darwin described evolution in the 19th century, they both knocked humans down a peg or two. The discovery of a hidden world would force us to reassess our place once more. The cosmos as we know it – with all its stars and planets – might turn out to be nothing more than a mediocre microcosm of a far richer and more complicated universe.

"Just as the Copernican revolution told us that the Earth isn't special, the same could be true for everything that we've so far discovered," says March-Russell. "All of this stuff around us, the stuff of our reality, is it the dominant and most complex part of the universe? It might not be."

It's a view that Weiner shares. "If evidence for a hidden world started showing up in experiments, you would unleash a huge amount of experimental creativity on the problem. If we find dark forces it would be a sea-change. I don't think it's hyperbole to say it would be one of the most important discoveries in particle physics." ( Source Link )

"Impossible", what does that mean?

Has science bottomed out in regards to finding the smallest elements that constitute matter? It seems to me that these particles that make up atoms are smashed into one another at extremely high velocities and they create other particles which live for a short time and then disappear into the void, another dimension or whatever.

If we were attempting to complete an actual jig saw puzzle would it be rational to further cut up the pieces? The way I see it objects in our universe are actually processes of energy and modern science should try to explain how these processes interact with each other.

If the Higgs boson particle or field is not observed then what gives mass-less particles mass when we observe them? I suspect that the observer has a lot to do with that. This may not be a challenge that physics should address or perhaps other disciplines (chemistry, biology, neuroscience, psychology etc.) would be more suitable and/or efficient?

Maybe a new scientific discipline arises to study the bigger picture?

Wish I could elaborate. Just a "feeling".

"Feelings" are welcome here. I think that rational intuition as well as observation leads us to knowledge. Thanks for commenting.

I'd have to go with 75% that Higgs won't be found. The only reason why I don't say 100% that Higgs boson doesn't exist is just as you say..

"...theory predicts the results of experiments so well when it is included."

and not that I'm anywhere close to understanding the mathematics involved however I do know that most physicists believe that it has to be there, somewhere according to their calculations. We'll see.

Richard,

Thanks for commenting. I can definitely sympathise with being at a loss on how to communicate some things with a religious loved one. Especially if that loved one feels that the myths in the Bible are real and things such as carbon dating, dinosaur fossils and biological evolution are irrelevant.

My entire extended family is hyper religious and while I'm not an atheist (I do believe in a higher consciousness or a universal Mind) I also know where ancient myths come from. I don't believe that the 6 day Genesis creation account was ever meant to be taken literally. It's not even the originally creation story. The first creation myths involved a cosmic egg being broken bringing forth twin gods and a watery formless cosmos where the "threads" or the web of life begins.

In my opinion, Myths serve a great purpose when they are considered as symbolic teaching tools which shed light on the human condition. Ancient archetypes and symbols have survived for almost 3000 years for a reason.

Some advise if you're interested. Obviously I don't know you or your spouse but from my own personal experience there is a way to have calm, rational conversations with a religious person without it turning into mega-drama.

Don't try to teach her about science unless she specifically requests it. Ask her about her beliefs and why she believes what she believes. This requires patience, I know. It's hard to sit there and listen to things that you know are not true. Your goal should be to help her to mentally work things out in a logical fashion on her own.

I've got this idea from Plato. Socrates always seemed to know the answers in the philosophical discussions he had with his friends but he never argued in a manner that was preachy nor did he teach in the "because I said so" or in the "your an idiot" manner. He would always patiently and politely go through this methodical process of asking whoever he was trying to make a point to questions aimed at helping them to find the truth on their own. (I just completed book 1 of "The Republic", it's very fascinating).

Over the years I've found that by using Socrates's style of using questions, even if I think that I already know the answers the rewards are two fold: We both learn new things as we are both logically step by step reassessing what used to be automatic beliefs. You won't see results right away. Originally I would not think that certain conversations made any difference at first however I've noticed specific family members over time have change their views a little and have become a little more rational. I guess that time was needed for them to reflect on new ideas and new information.

Anyway, thanks for indulging me in my long response.

Lastly, if the world stopped killing each other for the love of religion what will we do about those who kill for the love of money, land or political power? I don't think that religion is the root cause of all of our suffering and death. The problem has always been ignorance, both religious and secular.

Thanks Etva.

The more they interact, the heavier they become, whereas particles that never interact are left with no mass at all.

It may be useful to define mass...

Mass: The quantity of matter in a body; it's inertia, or resistance to acceleration. (Example: A watermelon has more mass than a grape)

I think that Physicist Fritjof Capra does a very good job of explaining scientific ideas and theories in a simple language that I can understand...(from The Tao of Physics)

All atoms and consequently all forms of matter in our environment, are composed of only three massive particles: the proton, the neutron and the electron. A fourth particle, the photon, is massless and represents the unit of electromagnetic radiation (e.g. light waves)...

(the neutrino is also a mass-less but stable particle)

...The particles mentioned so far represent only a fraction of the subatomic particles known today...All these particles can be created and annihilated in collision processes; each one can also be exchanged as a virtual particle and thus contribute to the interaction between other particles.

Basically there are 4 basic interaction categories: Strong interactions, electromagnetic interactions, weak interactions and gravitational interactions. ( link )

Among them, the electromagnetic and gravitational interactions are the most familiar, because they are experienced in the large scale world. The gravitational interaction acts between all particles, but is so weak it cannot be detected experimentally (no one has ever observed a graviton). In the macroscopic (observable) world, however, the huge number of particles making up massive bodies combine their gravitational interacton to produce the force of gravity which is the dominating force in the universe at large.

Electromagnetic interactions take place between all charged particles. They are responsible for the chemical processes, and the formation of all atomic and molecular structures. (e.g. the formation of atoms, biological cells, chemicals, all matter, dirt, rocks, planets etc.)

The Strong interactions hold the protons and neutrons together in the atomic nucleus. They constitute the nuclear force, by far the strongest of all forces in nature ( e.g. nuclear energy, weapons etc.)...

...all the particles fall into two broad groups: leptons and "hadrons", or strongly interacting particles. The leptons are involved in the fourth type of interactions, the weak interactions. These are so weak, and have such a short range, that they cannot hold anything together, whereas the other three give rise to binding forces--the strong interactions holding together the atomic nuclei, the electromagnetic interactions the atoms and molecules, and the gravitational interactions the planets, stars and galaxies. The weak interactions manifest themselves only in certain kinds of particle collisions and in particle decays...

...All interactions between hadrons are mediated by the exchange of other hadrons. It is these exchanges of massive particles that cause the strong interactions to have such a short range. They extend only over a distance of a few particle sizes and can therefore never build up a macroscopic force (we don't experience this force in our everyday lives.)

...The electromagnetic interactions, on the other hand, are mediated by the exchange of massless photons and thus their range in indefinitely long, which is why the electric and magnetic forces are encountered in the large-scale world. The gravitational interactions, too are believed to be mediated by a massless particle (the graviton)...

...The weak interactions, finally, have an extremely short range--much shorter than that of the strong interactions--and are therefore assumed to be produced by the exchange of very heavy particles (e.g. hadrons).

According to wikipedia...

In particle physics, the electroweak interaction is the unified description of two of the four known fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism and the weak interaction. Although these two forces appear very different at everyday low energies, the theory models them as two different aspects of the same force. Above the unification energy, on the order of 100 GeV, they would merge into a single electroweak force. Thus if the universe is hot enough (approximately 10¹⁵ K, a temperature exceeded until shortly after the Big Bang) then the electromagnetic force and weak force will merge into a combined electroweak force.

To wrap this up, all particles (if the current standard model or theory is correct) are mass-less until acted upon by the Higgs field. The quantum (meaning: any of the very small increments or parcels into which many forms of energy are subdivided) of the Higgs field is the Higgs boson.

Keep in mind that this would be over time. From the big bang until now particles and the amount of mass that they gained depended on their interaction or lack of interaction with the Higgs field/Higgs boson.

I know that his is a lot of information so read it again later if you have time. Also if anyone sees that I'm missing something or some of this info is incorrect please don't hessitate to correct me.

;-)

So what happened to the particles that are outside the Higgs Field. Those are the ones that never interacted and have no mass, right?

I think that the founders of this theory suggest that...

"...all particles had no mass just after the Big Bang. As the Universe cooled and the temperature fell below a critical value, an invisible force field called the ‘Higgs field’ was formed together with the associated ‘Higgs boson’. The field prevails throughout the cosmos: any particles that interact with it are given a mass via the Higgs boson. The more they interact, the heavier they become, whereas particles that never interact are left with no mass at all."

Who or what compels these mass less particles to interact with Higgs? I don't know. Maybe other forces such as electromagnetism and gravity have a lot to do with this?

But yes you are correct in that (again, if this theory is correct) particles that didn't interact with the Higgs field would be mass-less.

It's tough being only as smart as a 7th grade science student and still trying to understand this stuff:)

Hey, at least you are smarter than a 5th grader!

;-)

If you don't already, you will have at the least a general grasp of the basics. You already know terminology that most people aren't aware of. I'm impressed. Trust me, not even a year of conversing and debating on Newsvine and you'll soon be writing articles regarding Quantum Electrodynamics and the Casimir effect not only to help yourself learn more but also just for the fun of it.

Thanks dungbeetlemania,

Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe" is a resource that I visit often. And you're right he is excellent at explaining this stuff. He gives great examples from our everyday experiences that parallel some of the complex ideas and theories produced by classical mechanics, relativity, quantum mechanics, high energy particle physics and string theory. He gives a lot of information.

I think that you can view pbs' special "The Elegant Universe" online for free. It always helps my understanding to have visuals.

Wow! I find this to be absolutely fascinating. Where oh where have all the anti-particles gone?

The antimatter is missing – not from CERN, but from the Universe! At least that is what we can deduce so far from careful examination of the evidence. Matter and antimatter have the same mass, but opposite electric charge. For each basic particle of matter, there exists an antiparticle; for example, the negatively charged electron has a positively charged antiparticle called the positron. When a particle and its antiparticle come together, at the blink of an eye they both disappear in a flash as the annihilation process transforms their mass into energy....

...For the past 50 years and more, laboratories like CERN have routinely produced antiparticles, and in 1995 CERN became the first laboratory to create anti-atoms artificially. But no one has ever produced antimatter without obtaining the corresponding matter particles also. The scenario must have been the same during the birth of the Universe, when equal amounts of matter and antimatter must have been produced in the Big Bang.

So if matter and antimatter annihilate, and we and everything else are made of matter, why do we still exist? This mystery arises because we find ourselves living in a Universe made exclusively of matter. Didn't matter and antimatter completely annihilate at the time of the Big Bang? Perhaps this antimatter still exists somewhere else? Otherwise where did it go and what happened to it in the first place? (Source: link )

Also if anti-matter were off alone in some far corner of the universe would matter and anti-matter eventually meet creating a chain reaction of particle annihilation until nothing was left?