Comments on: Wherefore art thou (probably), Higgs?

Wherefore art thou (probably), Higgs?

carter — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:40:23 -0800

CERN has begun webcasting a public seminar in which there may or may not be some announcement regarding the significance or otherwise of recent observations regarding the possible existence of something that might be the Higgs boson. I am not a nuclear physicist, so I will try and keep up but will mainly be trying to catch the significance of the observations they have collected so far. In case these are talked about in terms of sigmas (there's scuttlebutt going around that this is a 3.5 sigma event), here's a table of sigma and probability.

I love live science! Just in time for breakfast and coffee for me! Some recent previous Higgs here.

By: carter

carter — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:43:18 -0800

No sound for me yet :(

By: atrazine

atrazine — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:57:38 -0800

Sound is up now, they're testing levels.

By: vanar sena

vanar sena — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:59:12 -0800

Lots of people checking facebook on their laptops while waiting. If any of you are reading this thread right now: Hi!

By: atrazine

atrazine — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:01:38 -0800

Seminar starting now.

By: ennui.bz

ennui.bz — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:05:40 -0800

Higgs Bosons for Everyone!

By: Mr. Bad Example

Mr. Bad Example — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:07:19 -0800

HNNNGGGGHH Wherefore means why, damn it

By: carter

carter — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:08:49 -0800

Ooops.

By: penduluum

penduluum — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:10:29 -0800

Stream crashed for anybody else? Actually: whole webpage crashed for anybody else?

By: Jehan

Jehan — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:12:03 -0800

Yeah, it's so not loading for me.

By: atrazine

atrazine — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:12:08 -0800

Stream is very choppy for me. I assume that there's an order of magnitude more people watching than usually watch these seminar webcasts.

By: Pilly

Pilly — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:12:12 -0800

Probably overloaded. Don't suppose anyone knows of it being streamed on any other sites?

By: howfar

howfar — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:12:50 -0800

I'm having no luck. At some point someone is going to realise how many people are actually interested in this stuff, and we won't have to deal with this every single time.

By: daveje

daveje — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:13:19 -0800

The stream is incredibly choppy. I can't help thinking that if they diverted some of the LHC power to feeding the webcast, we'd be able to watch it properly....

By: Westringia F.

Westringia F. — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:16:19 -0800

Yeah... looks like CERN's been slashdotted. Any backup streams? And "why art thou, Higgs?" might be just as interesting a question as "where art thou," so it's not such a bad title after all :)

By: daveje

daveje — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:17:48 -0800

If I'm reading the slide properly, they're saying 95% confidence level at 114.4GeV.

By: Dr. Zira

Dr. Zira — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:18:14 -0800

Here's a play by play from the Guardian.

By: carter

carter — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:18:54 -0800

And "why art thou, Higgs?" might be just as interesting a question as "where art thou," so it's not such a bad title after all :) Yeah I was just about to say, if you want to get metaphysical then it's quite appropriate ;)

By: penduluum

penduluum — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:18:59 -0800

That is straight-up Comic Sans. On the one hand, I'm present for what has a chance to be the most significant announcement in physics in my lifetime. On the other hand, I'm watching a Powerpoint presentation written in Comic Sans over the internet. Maybe the stream is getting disrupted by the overpowering energy of all the cognitive dissonance being directed at it from all over the world.

By: atrazine

atrazine — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:21:15 -0800

On the other hand, I'm watching a Powerpoint presentation written in Comic Sans over the internet. Imagine, instead of just being physicists, they could be physicists with really sweet taste in typefaces. Even in Switzerland, no-one really gives a fuck about Helvetica.

By: atrazine

atrazine — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:22:10 -0800

Here's a play by play from the Guardian. They can't see the webcast either.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:23:12 -0800

Could anyone who can see the webcast summarize for the rest of us?

By: knave

knave — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:23:38 -0800

"Streaming provided by: Groovy Gecko" Maybe next time they'll use someone competent... This is impossible.

By: jenkinsEar

jenkinsEar — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:25:04 -0800

The Beeb says:

The most coveted prize in particle physics - the Higgs boson - may have been glimpsed, say researchers reporting at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva. The particle is purported to be the means by which everything in the Universe obtains its mass. Scientists say that two experiments at the LHC see hints of the Higgs at the same mass, fuelling huge excitement. But the LHC does not yet have enough data to claim a discovery.

By: ennui.bz

ennui.bz — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:26:26 -0800

I can't help thinking that if they diverted some of the LHC power to feeding the webcast, we'd be able to watch it properly.... On the one hand, I'm present for what has a chance to be the most significant announcement in physics in my lifetime. On the other hand, I'm watching a Powerpoint presentation written in Comic Sans over the internet. "Streaming provided by: Groovy Gecko" Maybe next time they'll use someone competent... This is impossible. I like to watch.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:27:05 -0800

Westringia F.: " And "why art thou, Higgs?" might be just as interesting a question as "where art thou," so it's not such a bad title after all :)" No, because in the (Romeo and Juliet) context, she's asking "why did you have to be a Montague". Hence the followup "Deny thy father and refuse thy name!" and later "What's in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet."

By: Dr. Zira

Dr. Zira — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:29:09 -0800

atrazine: "They can't see the webcast either." Grar. The science needed to watch science is broken. At least the comments are somewhat entertaining.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:29:48 -0800

(So the answer to "Wherefore art thou, Higgs?" would be "Because Peter Higgs was the most prominent of many who described broken symmetry in electroweak theory in the 1960s and predicted the existence of a new boson".)

By: penduluum

penduluum — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:30:11 -0800

Oh let me be clear: I love everything about this. I just thought it was funny. And kind of endearing.

By: vanar sena

vanar sena — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:30:53 -0800

Yeah, this seminar might have been oversold a little. Anyone expecting this lady to say, "Ladies and Gentlemen, we have found the Higgs Boson*" is likely to be disappointed. * "Henceforth art thou, Higgs Boson"

By: stuartmm

stuartmm — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:30:54 -0800

Its a lot of bad powerpoint slides up till now. Just now it is a peasoup green background with 6 pink and light blue boxes.

By: carter

carter — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:36:02 -0800

126 GeV.

By: i_cola

i_cola — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:42:56 -0800

Wow. Possibly one of the greatest scientific discoveries is being communicated by a scientist holding a clip-on mic to her mouth, showing the worst, most eye-bleedingly horrific presentation ever, broadcast over a video stream I get to see/hear 40% of. At least the flying sky-god people can communicate their messages.

By: i_cola

i_cola — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:46:08 -0800

Is the green smiley face a standard in scientific presentations these days?

By: Dr. Zira

Dr. Zira — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:46:13 -0800

Needs moar luminosity.

By: howfar

howfar — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:46:55 -0800

So have they found Hoggs' bison or not? I thought we were having barbecue!

By: carter

carter — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:47:34 -0800

2.3 sigma.

By: daveje

daveje — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:47:45 -0800

95% CL between 115.5-131GeV, excess events at 126GeV, local significance 3.6sigma.

By: Segundus

Segundus — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:48:04 -0800

Of course we'll have to wait until these results are reproduced by a few other large hadron colliders before it's proper science.

By: hariya

hariya — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:48:29 -0800

Excess of events at 126 GeV. 115.5-131 GeV is the 95% confidence limit, according to her conclusions. Too early to draw conclusions, need more experiments and data.

By: stuartmm

stuartmm — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:48:54 -0800

Last Slide

By: penduluum

penduluum — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:50:06 -0800

Was just trying to type that up for the thread, stuartmm. Thanks for doing it much more efficiently!

By: stuartmm

stuartmm — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:52:41 -0800

so was i, then just grabbed the image. No questions to presenters till after this next presentation.

By: Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish

Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:03:39 -0800

Layperson question: I read that last slide to mean "we haven't found the Higgs boson yet, but we've narrowed it down (assuming it exists at all) to this range that just so happens to have a bunch of weird physics stuff going on in the middle of it." Is that accurate?

By: Edogy

Edogy — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:09:21 -0800

So there was no one in the balloon after all?!?

By: pmcp

pmcp — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:13:43 -0800

It's never comic sans in scifi films is it?

By: carter

carter — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:14:28 -0800

It was a choppy feed but I also grabbed some of the first prezo and put it in a Flickr set here.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:16:06 -0800

Metafilter: needs more data

By: ignignokt

ignignokt — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:20:42 -0800

Sounds like it could be out late next year! I'll be refreshing Amazon all day to pre-order one at the earliest opportunity.

By: aught

aught — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:21:07 -0800

By: bondcliff

bondcliff — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:24:03 -0800

Is there enough data for the TV news to report enough misinformation so my mom will call me up and tell me scientists have found evidence of God?

By: flippant

flippant — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:26:52 -0800

SCIENCE.

By: lumensimus

lumensimus — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:29:36 -0800

So if there's some Heisenbergian superposition where the Higgs boson both exists and doesn't exist, and we keep trying hard to pin down exactly which of these is the case, isn't there a 50/50 possibility that we'll cause the wave function to collapse to the state where the H-b definitely *doesn't* exist, thereby destroying the universe as we know it? This is only sort of a joke, actually. Surely there's a world (heh) of difference between a particular Higgs boson being in a particular spot and Higgs bosons in general being in this particular universe.

By: symbioid

symbioid — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:35:16 -0800

Wake me when we get a 5-6 sigma, thanks.

By: Westringia F.

Westringia F. — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:37:49 -0800

[Heh, I was just trying to bring it back to physics (though what I love about metafilter is that of course there be a Shakespeare derail in an experimental high energy thread!), but you're right, Plutor.... In which case "wherefore art thou, god particle?" is what I really want to know. When did it go from being the Higgs boson to the "god particle" in the popular press, anyway??]

By: fantabulous timewaster

fantabulous timewaster — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:40:25 -0800

Apparently Leon Lederman wanted to call it "that god-damned particle" ...

By: Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug

Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:40:45 -0800

When did it go from being the Higgs boson to the "god particle" in the popular press, anyway??

It wasn't even Lederman's choice. "He wanted to refer to it as that 'goddamn particle' and his editor wouldn't let him," says Higgs.
-The Guardian

By: Schismatic

Schismatic — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:51:33 -0800

The best layman way to think about this is that the two detectors have excluded huge swaths of Higgs mass now, and both see an excess of events in the non-excluded window. The details of the events are not especially channel-dependent, meaning that the different ways that the Higgs should be able to decay are all observed, which hints that it isn't a result of bad background estimation, which would be generally be channel-dependent. More data is needed, just as everyone expected, but the current hints are tantalizing. Moreover, the teams are showing off how much they do understand about their detectors, which will make future analysis all the much easier as the femtobarns stream in next year.

By: Devils Rancher

Devils Rancher — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 06:59:00 -0800

Now we can all have our very own higgs Boson!

By: ignignokt

ignignokt — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 07:01:15 -0800

Well, at least we know this.

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 07:05:39 -0800

Wake me when we get a 5-6 sigma, thanks. posted by symbioid I know a couple of Six Sigma black belts who never shut the fuck up about it, I could always bring them over.

By: GallonOfAlan

GallonOfAlan — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 07:13:02 -0800

MOAR FEMTOBARNS! And don't spare the horses!

By: seanmpuckett

seanmpuckett — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 07:16:24 -0800

Sooooo...... the stripper is dancing but hasn't got his/her kit off?

By: Schismatic

Schismatic — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 07:34:06 -0800

Whoops, I meant inverse femtobarns, of course. Best unit in all of physics.

By: oulipian

oulipian — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 07:37:20 -0800

I've always wanted to sit on a riverbank and watch the inverse femtobarns stream in.

By: kmz

kmz — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 07:40:26 -0800

So if there's some Heisenbergian superposition where the Higgs boson both exists and doesn't exist, and we keep trying hard to pin down exactly which of these is the case, isn't there a 50/50 possibility that we'll cause the wave function to collapse to the state where the H-b definitely *doesn't* exist, thereby destroying the universe as we know it? This is only sort of a joke, actually. Well there was that guy who proved that black is white and then got himself killed on the next zebra crossing. (So if I ever find set who cardinality is strictly greater than Aleph-0 and strictly less than the continuum, do numbers cease to exist?)

By: cirrostratus

cirrostratus — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 07:48:37 -0800

1.26 giga-watts. I mean, uh, 126 giga-electronvolts.

By: entropicamericana

entropicamericana — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 07:50:48 -0800

You know, I may not be making discoveries that alter our understanding of the universe, but at least I can console myself with the fact that I don't use Comic Sans.

By: Honorable John

Honorable John — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 07:59:49 -0800

Wake me when we get a 5-6 sigma, thanks. If you're not doing anything until then, I've got a couch I could use some help moving. I'm actually not sure how it got stuck here in this hallway in the first place ...

By: never used baby shoes

never used baby shoes — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:09:32 -0800

It's never comic sans in scifi films is it? Well, after today it will be.

By: Ad hominem

Ad hominem — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:27:30 -0800

All this trouble to find some guy's bozon. Couldn't he have just put up some flyers? Keeping exotic pets is unconscionable, guy just couldn't be satisfied with a dog or a cat or a really sweet lizard. He just had to have a bozon. Bozons are not pets people.

By: ZenMasterThis

ZenMasterThis — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:40:15 -0800

Couldn't he have just put up some flyers? He did. They were in Comic Sans. Didn't you see them attached to all the magnetic poles?

By: quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon

quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:56:38 -0800

magnets. how do they fucking work?

By: RedOrGreen

RedOrGreen — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:57:44 -0800

Wow. Comic Sans. Thanks for the last slide screengrab, stuartmm... Honestly, I was half expecting to see Rick Astley's grinning face at the bottom of the slide. Basically, ● Outlook good ● Signs point to yes ● Reply hazy, try again ● Ask again later.

By: KHAAAN!

KHAAAN! — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:19:37 -0800

Would the CERN presentation been better if it had looked like this?

By: RolandOfEld

RolandOfEld — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:26:15 -0800

The best layman way to think about this... Not hating on your explanation, which I'm sure is at least an order of magnitude or so simpler than what the scientists are saying, but wow. If that explanation is 'layman's terms' then I shudder to think about the actual math/technical terms behind what's going on in there.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:34:59 -0800

OK; this is kind of a sad truth about science: Scientists love Comic Sans. In general, the more technically complex and esoteric the work, the more likely it is to be presented in Comic Sans. I think people like it because it makes otherwise intimidating material seem "friendly". But yeah, it's all over the place.

By: maryr

maryr — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:36:27 -0800

On the other hand, I'm watching a Powerpoint presentation written in Comic Sans over the internet. Imagine, instead of just being physicists, they could be physicists with really sweet taste in typefaces. For physicists of this magnitude, shouldn't those slides be in LaTeX?

By: Copronymus

Copronymus — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:37:25 -0800

Would the CERN presentation been better if it had looked like this? God, no, the kerning is awful.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:00:11 -0800

KHAAAN!: "Would the CERN presentation been better if it had looked like this?" No, like this!

By: Schismatic

Schismatic — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:04:26 -0800

Both ATLAS and CMS have their brief reports online now. The physics blogs have started coming in, so there's a lot more discussion than was out there than there was earlier: -Cosmic Variance has a simple description of what happened. -Matt Strassler addresses a number of more technical points. -A lot of plots and a very unofficial combination of the two detectors' results by Philip Gibbs. -Another short description at Résonaances, which is typically one of the better rumor-mongers out there. -A more credulous than average take by experimentalist Tommaso Dorigo.

By: IAmBroom

IAmBroom — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:44:34 -0800

Whoops, I meant - for better or worse, femtobarns which are expressed in verse. In all of physics, the best unit found For unemployed eggheads to expound. Schismatic, forgive me.

By: finite

finite — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:00:07 -0800

GENEVA (Reuters) - "We don't call it the 'God particle', it's just the media that do that," a senior U.S. scientist politely told an interviewer on a major European radio station on Tuesday. "Well, I am the from the media and I'm going to continue calling it that," said the journalist - and continued to do so.

By: LogicalDash

LogicalDash — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:01:57 -0800

I fully support the media in their endeavor to dilute the concept of divinity.

By: Dr. Zira

Dr. Zira — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 20:30:59 -0800

The God Particle...it's so beautiful*...they should have sent a ~~poet~~ graphic designer. *Possibly.

By: springload

springload — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:22:37 -0800

OK; this is kind of a sad truth about science: Scientists love Comic Sans. Yes, this is absolutely true! Plenty of warning signs with skulls and bones and explanatory text in Comic Sans.