LHC confirms Higgs Boson discovery

The biggest problem isn't even the relativistically increasing energy you need to reach c. I mean, even cruising at half c is really impressive and the Lorentz factor is only another 15% or so at that point. It doesn't even double the energy until you're well over 0.8c or something, and there's not much reason to be going full-out 0.99c.

The problem is getting that high in the first place, which not only has energy concerns just for getting that far up to speed, but also conservation of momentum — getting that fast necessitates ejecting most of your ship's mass in propellant at a similar speed.

edited 5th Jul '12 8:51:55 PM by Pykrete

Well, propulsion systems have only gotten faster.

In any case, if conservation of mass/energy holds, I suspect that using some fancy trick to lower the mass of particles in a region would require you to spend exactly the energy that is contained in the mass that you are removing. It would be the equivalent of putting a hand under a scale and raising it in order to change the value displayed.

EDIT: ninja'd. A lot. Just noticed it.

Still, this is all speculation. What we have now is a nifty confirmation that the Standard Model (or something close to it) works, and that's it.

edited 5th Jul '12 11:17:03 PM by Carciofus

Yes, as of right now this only confirms the theory, but that shouldn't be downplayed as an 'only'.

Well, if you could theoretically affect mass with these things... Japan's going to have a much easier time building their giant mechas .

It's worth noting in the midst of this speculation that these aren't exactly new. They've been part of the Standard Model for years now. Rather than discovering them, we're merely confirming something we've strongly suspected for years. Something we were so sure of we built one of the largest (and most expensive) manmade object ever just to verify it. Also, something that requires the one of the largest manmade objects ever to verify it. If it takes something like the LHC to even observe the things, how do you expect us to make the jump to controlling them without an equally large-scale device?

Now the thing to do is study the Higgs Boson's properties. If I understand things correctly, this might help discriminate between a number of alternative approaches to particle physics.

We talked about how people like to refer to the Higgs boson as the "God Particle," and the consensus seems to be that it's a silly term.

So, I was thinking that maybe I should change this thread's name to "Strong candidate for Higgs boson discovered" or something like that, just to get rid of that stupid name.

Thoughts?

Just say "Higgs Boson"

Just heard someone today read about it and say "HOLY SHIT WE FOUND GOD!"

I'm not entirely sure he was joking.

So yeah, we should probably just call it the Higgs Boson until we find something a bit more snappy.

edited 6th Jul '12 12:45:25 AM by Pykrete

Masson.

And if "Boson" sounds silly to the Italians, can't they just call it the "Higgs Particle"? I mean sure, it's less precise, but it would get around sounding like "Higgs' gay sex partner".

Eh, we can just use "Boson". It will cause some sniggering; but I never said that sniggering is a bad thing

@Best Of: I think it's a good idea. The thread title's been bugging me since I saw it.

@Carc: You would indeed need to spend energy equal to the mass you're "lowering," I think.

And the expected Standard Model Higgs was around 135 or 136 Ge V. The one they've found is at 126 Ge V - so it's already got some deviations from a "pure" Standard Model Higgs Boson.

As such, one of the alternative approaches - or subtle modifications of the Standard Model - is likely to be correct. Now we just need to get enough data to figure out which one it is.

I'm game for a name change.

And since I'm a mod and I read the thread... *poof*. Magic happens.

Back to that conservation of energy thing, due to the principles of friction and loss in energy transfer, you'd need more energy to manipulate the cosmic environment to make something weigh less than you would to push it harder. It's very similar in principle to the issues with the Alcubierre drive: most calculations show that it would take vastly more energy to create the space-time "bubble" that would let you locally bypass the speed of light than the vessel utilizing the drive would be capable of generating.

On the near-lightspeed thing: there is an upper limit to the efficiency of any propulsion system that determines its maximum effective velocity. This is because the drive has to take its fuel with it, and you reach a point at which the mass of fuel you have to drag along is so large that it slows down the drive rather than speeding it up.

The energy conversion efficiency of a propulsion system determines this maximum velocity, and there's a term for it that I don't remember offhand. Modern chemical rockets max out at something like .01c or .001c or even lower. I don't feel like looking it up. Ion drives and solar sails and the like can go much faster but accelerate much more slowly.

edited 6th Jul '12 10:32:39 AM by Fighteer

Okay, so bosons can occupy the same state and energy at the same time. What's a "state?"

edited 6th Jul '12 1:32:16 PM by Canondorf

It's the state of the particle (like the value of its various properties). For example, a particle might be spinning, that'd be one value that comprises its state.

edited 6th Jul '12 1:40:41 PM by breadloaf

Well, consider electrons, for example. Electrons are fermions, and not bosons; and therefore, no two electrons can have the same quantum state. What this means is that if you take a nucleus of an atom, and you give it a bunch of electrons, it is not possible that all electrons occupy the lowest energy state, that is, the "orbit" that is "closer" to the nucleus (I am simplifying a bit here, but that's more or less the idea). So they distribute on a number of orbits around the atom, "filling them up" gradually.

Now consider photons, instead. Photons are bosons, and not fermions: and therefore, it is perfectly possible for two photons to occupy the same state. What does this mean? Well, for example, consider a laser. It is a ray of photons that all have precisely the same polarization, that move in the same direction, and so on. At any point of the ray, there are a lot of photons that are perfectly indistinguishable under all points of view. If photons were fermions, this would simply be impossible.

At least, that's how I understand this. Again, I am not a physicist.

The fact FTL is likely impossible is depressing.

Basically, a state is an ordered set of variables that define a particle's characteristics at any given time — for instance, the usual set for electrons is (n, l, m_l, m_s) for shell, sub-orbital, orientation, and spin, because these are sufficient to be able to look at the electrons whirling around an atom, point at one, and say "oh, you mean that one." And so on for other particles. Quantum limitations prevent fermions from occupying identical states, but not bosons.

edited 6th Jul '12 1:57:28 PM by Pykrete

Thanks to chemistry I actually understand most of this stuff.

I still no clue what a boson or a fermion is though. Someone mind enlightening me?

A fermion is a particle that follows Fermi-Dirac statistics, whereas bosons follow Bose-Einstein statistics. Which is pretty much where layman's terms peter out because from there it's basically just Algebra Hammer of Justice stuff.

It's kind of interesting though that the equations governing them are separated by a single minus sign. Which I was completely paranoid about forgetting in my Thermal final.

edited 6th Jul '12 1:56:59 PM by Pykrete

That doesn't really help...

So what do bosons make up? Apparently they're not electrons but are Protons or Neutrons in that group?

They are two kinds of particles. Electrons, protons, neutrons, neutrinos and so on are fermions; photons, gluons, mesons, gravitons (if they exist) and so on are bosons.

A particle is said to be a boson if it obeys the Bose-Einstein statistics, and it is a fermion if it obeys the Fermi-Dirac statistics. These are two mathematical laws that say how indistinguishable particles may distribute with respect to different states, basically.

The big difference between these two sets of laws is that the Fermi-Dirac statistics say that no two particles may occupy precisely the same state, while the Bose-Einstein have no such requirement; but apart from that, they are simply two different mathematical laws which describe the behaviour of two different sorts of objects that we call "particles".

edited 6th Jul '12 2:02:25 PM by Carciofus