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The idea of "New Physics" is sensational. There's only improvements to current models, and maybe new models for new situations. The Standard Model has worked ou

The idea of "New Physics" is sensational. There's only improvements to current models, and maybe new models for new situations. The Standard Model has worked out for too many situations for it to be just "wrong".

CJefferson 14y ago
I would say that Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics, were 'new physics' over the old Newtonian model, although for many, many, many problems, Newtonian mechanics are still the best model. If this finally has found a major flaw in the Standard Model, I consider that extremely exciting news.
- sidww2 14y ago
  Relativity & Quantum Mechanics were massive paradigm shifts. In contrast, any flaw in the Standard Model, while exciting, will likely be orders of magnitude smaller in terms of impacting how we view the world. Also we already know the Standard Model is not the complete picture (it cannot integrate QM & General Relativity).
- crusso 14y ago
  That's a REALLY BIG "If" there. Like the "neutrinos observed moving faster than light" recent non-story, these individual experimental anomalies should be regarded with a high degree of suspicion. We have a long way to go as far as accumulating evidence contrary to the Standard Model before we get to an analogous situation to where Einstein was when he postulated Relativity.
yk 14y ago
The phrase "new physics" refers to the jargon of calling various subfields something-physics (like "Higgs-physics" or "B-physics"). New physics is correspondingly any additional field in the standard model ( and therefore just a tweak).
gus_massa 14y ago
I recently took a course in the university about elementary particles. The expression "new physics" means they are measuring something that is unexpected, and that they think that to explain it they will have to make some correction to the "standard model", for example, add another particle/field/interaction.
- Marge 14y ago
  Yes. I lack the background to judge whether this will probably be explained by something relatively boring such as a new resonance particle composed of already known fundamental particles (i.e. a new baryon) or maybe an excited state of an already known particle, or something fundamentally new, like supersymmetry, Higgs or something else. This is why I posed the title as a question. I find it very interesting though that the paper speaks about excluding the "type II two-Higgs-doublet (2HD) model charged Higgs", but I don't know what "type II" there means. The 2HDM is the simplest way you can extend the Standard Model Higgs field (which is what all the Higgs search buzz is about) in to many beyond the standard model theories, like supersymmetry. At least the apparently quite popular minimal supersymmetric model has a 2HD. But the key question is what's type II, and where's my type I?
  - gus_massa 14y ago
    The resonances and composed particles are used in the calculations, so if this result is true, it would involve new things that are not in the standard model. We studied only the simple version that has only one Higgs field :(, so I don’t know what type I/II means, but using Google, I found this (see slide #6), that starts with a not very technical introduction: http://www.umich.edu/~mctp/SciPrgPgs/events/2007/kanefest/haber.pdf http://www.umich.edu/~mctp/SciPrgPgs/events/2007/kanefest/ha...
    - Marge 14y ago
      Yeah resonances and such would be new, but nothing as exciting as say a charged Higgs. I think they found some previously undiscovered resonance particle at the LHC a few months ago, but it didn't really even make the news outside physics. Thanks for the link, that was actually really helpful. I wonder why the paper doesn't say anything about if their data would fit a type I or type III charged Higgs. Probably has something to do with whether leptons are considered to be up or down type (?) and thus how the charged Higgses would couple in the given process.
kijin 14y ago
Newtonian physics has worked out for too many situations for it to be just "wrong". That doesn't sound quite right, does it? I'm all for keeping sensationalism off of science, but I don't think "it's been working great so far" is a good reason to discount improvements to a model that we know is incomplete. Of course, a lot depends on what you mean by "wrong".

CJefferson 14y ago

I would say that Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics, were 'new physics' over the old Newtonian model, although for many, many, many problems, Newtonian mechanics are still the best model. If this finally has found a major flaw in the Standard Model, I consider that extremely exciting news.

sidww2 14y ago
Relativity & Quantum Mechanics were massive paradigm shifts. In contrast, any flaw in the Standard Model, while exciting, will likely be orders of magnitude smaller in terms of impacting how we view the world. Also we already know the Standard Model is not the complete picture (it cannot integrate QM & General Relativity).
crusso 14y ago
That's a REALLY BIG "If" there. Like the "neutrinos observed moving faster than light" recent non-story, these individual experimental anomalies should be regarded with a high degree of suspicion. We have a long way to go as far as accumulating evidence contrary to the Standard Model before we get to an analogous situation to where Einstein was when he postulated Relativity.

yk 14y ago

The phrase "new physics" refers to the jargon of calling various subfields something-physics (like "Higgs-physics" or "B-physics"). New physics is correspondingly any additional field in the standard model ( and therefore just a tweak).

gus_massa 14y ago

I recently took a course in the university about elementary particles. The expression "new physics" means they are measuring something that is unexpected, and that they think that to explain it they will have to make some correction to the "standard model", for example, add another particle/field/interaction.

Marge 14y ago
Yes. I lack the background to judge whether this will probably be explained by something relatively boring such as a new resonance particle composed of already known fundamental particles (i.e. a new baryon) or maybe an excited state of an already known particle, or something fundamentally new, like supersymmetry, Higgs or something else. This is why I posed the title as a question. I find it very interesting though that the paper speaks about excluding the "type II two-Higgs-doublet (2HD) model charged Higgs", but I don't know what "type II" there means. The 2HDM is the simplest way you can extend the Standard Model Higgs field (which is what all the Higgs search buzz is about) in to many beyond the standard model theories, like supersymmetry. At least the apparently quite popular minimal supersymmetric model has a 2HD. But the key question is what's type II, and where's my type I?
- gus_massa 14y ago
  The resonances and composed particles are used in the calculations, so if this result is true, it would involve new things that are not in the standard model. We studied only the simple version that has only one Higgs field :(, so I don’t know what type I/II means, but using Google, I found this (see slide #6), that starts with a not very technical introduction: http://www.umich.edu/~mctp/SciPrgPgs/events/2007/kanefest/haber.pdf http://www.umich.edu/~mctp/SciPrgPgs/events/2007/kanefest/ha...
  - Marge 14y ago
    Yeah resonances and such would be new, but nothing as exciting as say a charged Higgs. I think they found some previously undiscovered resonance particle at the LHC a few months ago, but it didn't really even make the news outside physics. Thanks for the link, that was actually really helpful. I wonder why the paper doesn't say anything about if their data would fit a type I or type III charged Higgs. Probably has something to do with whether leptons are considered to be up or down type (?) and thus how the charged Higgses would couple in the given process.

kijin 14y ago

Newtonian physics has worked out for too many situations for it to be just "wrong". That doesn't sound quite right, does it? I'm all for keeping sensationalism off of science, but I don't think "it's been working great so far" is a good reason to discount improvements to a model that we know is incomplete. Of course, a lot depends on what you mean by "wrong".