Has anyone seen Higgs' Boson recently

[epenguin]

by any chance?

 

[e.bar.goum]

Damn, you lost it again?!

Checked behind the couch?

 

[Pengwuino]

CERN announced they saw hints of one. They need to open up the detector and find where it went though. Hopefully it doesn't jump out and try to escape to Italy like those neutrinos did.

 

[turbo]

Damn, you lost it again?!

Checked behind the couch?

It might be under the dresser. Those rascals are quite easy to lose track of.

 

[Drakkith]

I MIGHT have swept it up and thrown it into the trash. My bad.

 

[PAllen]

Eighteen months ago I made a custom bumper sticker I have on my car (dreading the likely way upcoming political campaigns would play out):


Higgs 2012
Susy Too

At least half of it is somewhat promising.

 

[Bill_K]

My bumper sticker

 

[jtbell]

Maybe it's that fuzzy blob under my bed. You know, Heisenberg uncertainty principle and all that. No, wait, it's just a dust bunny.

 

[Borek]

If not Higgs' Boson, then perhaps Hugged Bison will do?

 

[Andy Resnick]

This time of year, I'm trying to *lose* weight, not find it.

 

[Astronuc]

Perhaps they will be more successful at measuring it's elusivity.

Anyway - just in case - what colour is it? If I see one, I'll let folks know.

 

[epenguin]

If not Higgs' Boson, then perhaps Hugged Bison will do?

It looks massive.

That's all down to the Higgs boson dontcherknow - it creates mass.

Hey - including its own!?

All very confusing really, well I expect these physicists know what they're doing.

 

[PAllen]

Perhaps they will be more successful at measuring it's elusivity.

Anyway - just in case - what colour is it? If I see one, I'll let folks know.

Hey, I always thought the Higgs was colorless if SM is correct ...

 

[rhody]

I was worried the BSM Forum was going to be flooded with crackpots drawn to PF like honey. I guess I shouldn't have. I think the melodramatic way that most of the media handled it was partly the reason. The news mentioned it as a thirty second aside at the end of the nightly news. Whew, that was close... Imagine what would have happened if they did a five minute piece with background.

Rhody...

 

[lisab]

Damn, you lost it again?!

Checked behind the couch?

There would be no couch without it - it *must* be under there.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I hope they never find it. I'm heavy enough as it is.

 

[Dembadon]

I don't lose things because I put them in a specific place. I put my Higgs Boson next to my keys so I don't forget it in the morning when I leave for school.

 

[KingNothing]

I actually equipped mine with one of those pet-tracking devices, just in case I lose it.

 

[Dembadon]

Slightly off-topic: What is the reason for the apostrophe in "Higgs' Boson" in the title of the thread? I guess I misunderstood the question.

I have no idea where Peter's boson is; he can keep track of his own particles.

 

[Borg]

by any chance?

Several women have. That's why he's no longer running for president.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Hey, I always thought the Higgs was colorless if SM is correct ...

While colorless and odorless, most people think they taste like chicken.

 

[Dembadon]

While colorless and odorless, most people think they taste like chicken.

Chicken tastes like ranch dressing to me. I think it's because I put a lot of ranch dressing on it.

 

[micromass]

http://img.ibtimes.com/www/data/images/full/2011/07/29/139570.jpg

 

[turbo]

Chuck is the Higgs? Now I'm scared.

 

[Drakkith]

I say we put it on a milk carton with "Have you seen this boson?"

 

[wuliheron]

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a Higgs that wasn’t there
It wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish it would go away...

When I came home last night at three
The Higgs was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see it there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door... (slam!)

Last night I saw upon the stair
A little Higgs who wasn’t there
It wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish it would go away

 

[jobyts]

While colorless and odorless, most people think they taste like chicken.

Ivan, it is Higgs Boson, not Higg's bosom.

 

[turbo]

Peter Higgs theorized about the existence of a mass-granting boson quite a while back. Many millions of dollars have been spent trying to find this wonderful particle. While current experiments have managed to rule out larger and larger spreads of energies where the Higgs can't be, there is a curious lack of professional curiosity IMO.

What if Higgs was off base, and the Standard Model of particle physics needs to be modified so that particles can be shown to have mass without the mediation of intermediate particles?

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I think we're all bosons this bus.

 

[turbo]

I think we're all bosons this bus.

 

[PAllen]

Peter Higgs theorized about the existence of a mass-granting boson quite a while back. Many millions of dollars have been spent trying to find this wonderful particle. While current experiments have managed to rule out larger and larger spreads of energies where the Higgs can't be, there is a curious lack of professional curiosity IMO.

What if Higgs was off base, and the Standard Model of particle physics needs to be modified so that particles can be shown to have mass without the mediation of intermediate particles?

Don't know why you would think this. Alternative mechanisms were proposed contemporaneously with Higgs, and at intervals ever since. It is a whole cottage industry in HEP theory. Lack of media attention does not imply lack of existence. The popularity of the Higgs is simply that most physicists think it works best (either in its simplest form, or in a supersymmetric extension) Note a few additional points left out of too many media stories:

1) The region not excluded was, from fairly early on, the region believed most likely to have the Higgs. Thus the exclusions are interesting but uneventful: it's not where we thought it probably wasn't.

2) If the last region is excluded, physicists are more than ready to pull out one of the alternatives or invent new ones.

 

[jtbell]

Is this the guy we're looking for?

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lp67negAWA1qzpo93o1_500.jpg

 

[Drakkith]

No, Boson's have a GREEN nose...

 

[256bits]

Higgs and his boson buddies went to the bar.
Bartender says "This is a clean place. You guys better not make a mass around here."
( uncontrolled laughter )
Uranium didn't want trouble so he split.
Neutrino just whisked back on out, barely noticed.
Electron got excited and emmitted something to Photon.
Photon shifted red-faced and waved goodby.
In the commotion, Higgs was no where to be found.

 

[rhody]

Ok, enough fun and frivolity, http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2011/dec/18/untitled-p_godparticle121811/

The Higgs is the holdout. One major problem with finding the Higgs is it doesn’t stick around very long. It’s too ephemeral to be captured in a bottle. It theoretically winks into existence in high-energy collisions for a mere yoctosecond, which is one-septillionth of a second.

It then decays into less-exotic particles that careen in all directions in an uncontrolled spew. The challenge for scientists is to analyze this decay pattern and look for authentic Higgs debris buried amid the subatomic wreckage.

It’s like stalking a snow leopard by its footprints after a million other big cats have tramped across the same snow field.

After the announcement, physicists immediately did what physicists do: They argued about the data.

and...

In the past year, the LHC has produced some 300 trillion collisions. And still it’s not enough. The search requires powerful computers looking for a Higgs-suggestive bump, or an “excess of events,” in some region of the data.

Such a bump has now appeared at a specific place, showing something with a mass of around 125 billion electron volts, roughly 125 times the mass of a proton. If that’s the Higgs, it would support the Standard Model of particle physics and be in a range where further scrutiny might turn up more definitive proof.

A yoctosecond is 10 to the minus 24th of a second, which is is one septillionth (short scale) of a second. I thought CMS and ATLAS had sampling rates and frequencies that are much much longer than this, so how to capture such a rare and exceedingly fast event ? Since this is GD I only expect a layman's response to steer me in the right direction, unless of course some BSM professional is out there who cares to answer to a higher level of fidelity, so to speak.

Rhody...

 

[PAllen]

Ok, enough fun and frivolity, http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2011/dec/18/untitled-p_godparticle121811/

A yoctosecond is 10 to the minus 24th of a second, which is is one septillionth (short scale) of a second. I thought CMS and ATLAS had sampling rates and frequencies that are much much longer than this, so how to capture such a rare and exceedingly fast event ? Since this is GD I only expect a layman's response to steer me in the right direction, unless of course some BSM professional is out there who cares to answer to a higher level of fidelity, so to speak.

Rhody...

The answer is in what you quoted:

"It then decays into less-exotic particles that careen in all directions in an uncontrolled spew. The challenge for scientists is to analyze this decay pattern and look for authentic Higgs debris buried amid the subatomic wreckage."

Software filters the ocean of data for patterns of decay particles of the right type and total energy occurring closely together in time. You don't need to worry about that yoctosecond. If the pattern is relatively rare by chance with 1 nanosecond synchronization, and you can calculate what the random background rate of production is, you have what is called a detection channel.

 

[e^(i Pi)+1=0]

I have it here next to me.

 

[rhody]

You don't need to worry about that yoctosecond. If the pattern is relatively rare by chance with 1 nanosecond synchronization, and you can calculate what the random background rate of production is, you have what is called a detection channel.

PAllen,

A little more fill in the details here would be nice.

Thanks...

Rhody...

 

[PAllen]

PAllen,

A little more fill in the details here would be nice.

Thanks...

Rhody...

You said you didn't want too much detail. Anyway, you are trying to distinguish a possible Higgs decay from all previously known processes. So you look for known processes that could produce the same particles as a Higgs decay (among many others) with, with similar energies. Hopefully, you can filter out most of these by also looking for other things produced that are not produced by Higgs. With lots of work, you finally conclude that if the Higgs didn't exist, all known processes would produce a particular signature of particles and energy with a given time coincidence at some rate (e.g., one of very trillion collisions). An excess over the expected rate is then a sign of a possible Higgs (e.g. 3 out of two trillion collisions). The larger the excess, and the more expected signatures possessing a predicted excess, the higher the confidence you have detected a Higgs.

 

[epenguin]

Understand a cluster of particles of which you'd see a lot around anyway but you wouldn't see all turning up together at the very same time often unless they came from Higgs.

Could you tell us what exactly what stuff they are looking to see?

 

[PAllen]

Understand a cluster of particles of which you'd see a lot around anyway but you wouldn't see all turning up together at the very same time often unless they came from Higgs.

Could you tell us what exactly what stuff they are looking to see?

I think the main (but not only) decay channels being sought are:

Higgs -> Z + anti Z -> 4 muons (2 must be anti)
Higgs -> Z + anti Z -> 4 electrons (2 must be anti)
Higgs -> 2 gamma photons
Higgs -> W + anti W -> e+e- + 2 neutrino
Higgs -> W + anti W -> muon + antimuion+ 2 neutrinos

In each case, both energy and temporal coincidence filters apply to the sought end products. Despite this, there are many processes other than the Higgs which will produce each result (the background that must be statistically exceeded).

W and Z are the two different types of vector bosons that mediate weak interactions.

If you still have more questions, please ask at the high energy physics forum. This is not not my primary knowledge area.

Here is a link for terms used to describe the search process:

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/background/B09-Important_Higgs_terms_en.html

 

[rhody]

I think the main (but not only) decay channels being sought are:

Higgs -> Z + anti Z -> 4 muons (2 must be anti)
Higgs -> Z + anti Z -> 4 electrons (2 must be anti)
Higgs -> 2 gamma photons
Higgs -> W + anti W -> e+e- + 2 neutrino
Higgs -> W + anti W -> muon + antimuion+ 2 neutrinos

In each case, both energy and temporal coincidence filters apply to the sought end products. Despite this, there are many processes other than the Higgs which will produce each result (the background that must be statistically exceeded).

W and Z are the two different types of vector bosons that mediate weak interactions.

If you still have more questions, please ask at the high energy physics forum. This is not not my primary knowledge area.

Here is a link for terms used to describe the search process:

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/background/B09-Important_Higgs_terms_en.html

Thanks for your increasing level of detail response. I appreciate it.

Rhody...

 

[RonL]

I think the main (but not only) decay channels being sought are:

Higgs -> Z + anti Z -> 4 muons (2 must be anti)
Higgs -> Z + anti Z -> 4 electrons (2 must be anti)
Higgs -> 2 gamma photons
Higgs -> W + anti W -> e+e- + 2 neutrino
Higgs -> W + anti W -> muon + antimuion+ 2 neutrinos

Bought two set of everything on the list, off e-bay, hope they arrive before Xmas.

 

[turbo]

My dog steals stuff and hides it. He might have the Higgs stashed around here, but he is pretty cagey about it. I have recovered some socks, but no Higgs, so far.

 

[rethipher]

And 20 minutes later my search for some real discussion turned up nil. Darn, no higgs either. I'm going to go post on facebook and look some more.

 

[Evo]

New posts have been moved to the new thread. All new CERN posts about tomorrow's announcent need to go there.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=618073