3 ms·

The hunt for the higg's boson reminds me of the attempts to measure the speed of the earth using light beams. Everything we thought we knew about physics told

The hunt for the higg's boson reminds me of the attempts to measure the speed of the earth using light beams. Everything we thought we knew about physics told us that we should be able to measure the speed the earth was orbiting by measuring the difference in speed between two beams of light. When the experiments failed, the response was develop more precise measuring techniques, and more perfect mirrors. It wasn't until Einstein that people realized these failed experiments were not failures at all, but evidence that the universe doesn't work quite how we thought. The hunt for the Higg's Boson, and the "failure" to find it after all these years just seems like a reminder that empirical evidence > theoretical models. Just because the math seems elegant doesn't mean it necessarily applies to the universe we are living in. Of course, they may find the Higg's boson tomorrow, and then my little theory about them being wrong would be proved wrong, but that's science for you.

jessriedel 16y ago
While it would be very surprising if the Higgs turned out to be a boring, Standard-Model Higgs, there are very good reasons to believe that something Higgs-like has to happen at the multi-TeV scale. Basically, without a Higgs the Standard Model yields non-physical predictions (e.g. probabilities for certain processes exceed unity). In other words, the Standard Model isn't even consistent above a TeV or so without the Higgs. Something has to give. Edit: to make contact with your example, everyone knew that if you didn't find evidence for the ether, than the model of electromagnetism was very wrong. In fact, that was great justification for carrying out Michelson-Morely type experiments.
avar 16y ago
The two aren't really comparable. With Newtonian physics there were clear signs decades before Einstein that something wasn't right, the clearest example being the perihelion precession of Mercury: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_problem_in_general_relativity#Historical_context_and_intuitive_understanding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_problem_in_general_relat... In modern particle physics the main limitation is lack of experimental data. To get that data we have to build giant and expensive experiments like the LHC. Even if the LHC is completely successful we're still going to need bigger colliders to test other things at even higher energies. Another problem is that the current theories make predictions about things that we probably won't ever be able to measure directly due to the microscopic scales involved. To name an example. We think that gluons exist inside atomic nuclei, but we can't observe them unless we break the nuclei apart, thus destroying the gluon's habitat. We think it's there because we see what looks like the energy of a gluon falling apart, and because mathematical models back it up.
- jessriedel 16y ago
  At the time, no one (not even Einstein) thought the precession of Mercury had anything to do with the lack of experimental detection of the Ether. Einstein figured out special relativity, solving the Ether problem, almost a decade before doing general relativity and thereby solving the precession or Mercury.
fhars 16y ago
Your early history of relativity isn't quite correct. The experimental results posed no convincing challenge to the established theory. After all, Lorentz' theory of ether contraction in the vicinity of moving bodies (the exact same mathematical operations that we today see as a fundamental building block of special relativity that still go by the name Lorentz contraction) could adequately explain those experiments (the maths is exactly the same as for a relativistic interpretation, yielding the exact same predictions for all experiments possible around 1900). What motivated Einstein's work (and that of other, less successful theoretical physicists at the time) was the mathematical impossibility of classical mechanics and classical electrodynamics both being correct at the same time. After all, his paper that introduced special relativity was called "on the electrodynamics of moving bodies." There were no mirrors involved.
cldwalker 16y ago
> The hunt for the Higg's Boson, and the "failure" to find it after all these years just seems like a reminder that empirical evidence > theoretical models. That assertion doesn't make sense as you invoke Einstein to support it. Einstein was a theoretical physicist. A more accurate and less sensationalistic assertion could have been : one theoretical model > another theoretical model.
aphyr 16y ago
The hunt for the Higg's Boson, and the "failure" to find it after all these years just seems like a reminder that empirical evidence > theoretical models. Just because the math seems elegant doesn't mean it necessarily applies to the universe we are living in. I presume you're using quotes around "failure" to remind us that, in fact, there has been no such thing. We haven't explored the full energy range where our models suggest the Higgs boson(s) could live, and even where we have searched, we haven't accrued enough data for a statistically significant result--positive or negative. Claiming we have failed to find the Higgs is like claiming tigers don't exist without leaving New York.

jessriedel 16y ago

While it would be very surprising if the Higgs turned out to be a boring, Standard-Model Higgs, there are very good reasons to believe that something Higgs-like has to happen at the multi-TeV scale. Basically, without a Higgs the Standard Model yields non-physical predictions (e.g. probabilities for certain processes exceed unity). In other words, the Standard Model isn't even consistent above a TeV or so without the Higgs. Something has to give. Edit: to make contact with your example, everyone knew that if you didn't find evidence for the ether, than the model of electromagnetism was very wrong. In fact, that was great justification for carrying out Michelson-Morely type experiments.

avar 16y ago

The two aren't really comparable. With Newtonian physics there were clear signs decades before Einstein that something wasn't right, the clearest example being the perihelion precession of Mercury: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_problem_in_general_relativity#Historical_context_and_intuitive_understanding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_problem_in_general_relat... In modern particle physics the main limitation is lack of experimental data. To get that data we have to build giant and expensive experiments like the LHC. Even if the LHC is completely successful we're still going to need bigger colliders to test other things at even higher energies. Another problem is that the current theories make predictions about things that we probably won't ever be able to measure directly due to the microscopic scales involved. To name an example. We think that gluons exist inside atomic nuclei, but we can't observe them unless we break the nuclei apart, thus destroying the gluon's habitat. We think it's there because we see what looks like the energy of a gluon falling apart, and because mathematical models back it up.

jessriedel 16y ago
At the time, no one (not even Einstein) thought the precession of Mercury had anything to do with the lack of experimental detection of the Ether. Einstein figured out special relativity, solving the Ether problem, almost a decade before doing general relativity and thereby solving the precession or Mercury.

fhars 16y ago

Your early history of relativity isn't quite correct. The experimental results posed no convincing challenge to the established theory. After all, Lorentz' theory of ether contraction in the vicinity of moving bodies (the exact same mathematical operations that we today see as a fundamental building block of special relativity that still go by the name Lorentz contraction) could adequately explain those experiments (the maths is exactly the same as for a relativistic interpretation, yielding the exact same predictions for all experiments possible around 1900). What motivated Einstein's work (and that of other, less successful theoretical physicists at the time) was the mathematical impossibility of classical mechanics and classical electrodynamics both being correct at the same time. After all, his paper that introduced special relativity was called "on the electrodynamics of moving bodies." There were no mirrors involved.

cldwalker 16y ago

> The hunt for the Higg's Boson, and the "failure" to find it after all these years just seems like a reminder that empirical evidence > theoretical models. That assertion doesn't make sense as you invoke Einstein to support it. Einstein was a theoretical physicist. A more accurate and less sensationalistic assertion could have been : one theoretical model > another theoretical model.

aphyr 16y ago

The hunt for the Higg's Boson, and the "failure" to find it after all these years just seems like a reminder that empirical evidence > theoretical models. Just because the math seems elegant doesn't mean it necessarily applies to the universe we are living in. I presume you're using quotes around "failure" to remind us that, in fact, there has been no such thing. We haven't explored the full energy range where our models suggest the Higgs boson(s) could live, and even where we have searched, we haven't accrued enough data for a statistically significant result--positive or negative. Claiming we have failed to find the Higgs is like claiming tigers don't exist without leaving New York.