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From the video around :30 seconds in, "...this is when surprises might happen. Any day could be the day that changed the world." I am still looking for an ans

by kcima 14y ago

From the video around :30 seconds in, "...this is when surprises might happen. Any day could be the day that changed the world." I am still looking for an answer as to how the world could be changed by the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle. What are some possible outcomes for society? I do not doubt that it will change, and I agree fully with it's value, however, I can't find any specifics in what ways it might change or what new technologies might be created with or without the Higgs Boson. Also, at a 9 Billion USD price tag, how were our governments convinced? There must be something beyond scientific intellectual curiosity. Those of us with this curiosity may be happy to pay for it, but how were politicians convinced? What value will this provide to the governments of the world who made the decision to purchase this answer. I'm sure it's not this... Scientists: "We need 9 Billion to find out if the Higgs Boson particle exists." Governments: "OK, here is your 9 Billion." ... 15 years later Scientists: "The answer is yes. The Higgs Boson does exist." Governments: "Oh, that's really great." Update: I understand and agree fully with the value of this research. I am asking if there are any specific technologies that are expected to be advanced or if it is just added knowledge that could lead anywhere. I am also wondering how it was explained to politicians who don't have specific interest in science.

sophacles 14y ago
At a 9 Billion USD price tag, what are our governments buying for us? There must be something beyond scientific intellectual curiosity. Those of us with this curiosity may be happy to pay for it, but how were politicians convinced? What value will this provide to the governments of the world who made the decision to purchase this answer. False dilemma. When we spend trillions of dollars a year to kill people in the name of stopping violence, 10^-3 of that for curiosity is not something that is rational to attack. Particularly when exploration for curiosity's sake has led to plenty of demonstrably beneficial results.
- protomyth 14y ago
  "Your wasting a lot of money here, so you shouldn't mind wasting a lesser amount here" Government funding needs to justify itself, not against other uses for the money. The bills have come due and we need to cut out what isn't vital. 9 billion could have paid a lot of health insurance policies. I'm glad they valued this, but it needs to be valuable based on its own merit.
  - sophacles 14y ago
    Im not saying that. Im saying if you care about waste, quit attacking minor inefficiencies when instead, there is a giant one right there. I have no problem talking about whether some money spent on science has value, right after we deal with the huge money sink in other places. It's basic triage. Don't waste our time worrying about pocket change when you're burning hundred dollar bills because the smoke is pretty.
    - protomyth 14y ago
      The problem with most government budgets is that most of the problems are the pocket change. All the little things need to be cleaned up to get at the bigger issues.
      - sophacles 14y ago
        I'm not a mathematician, but I am pretty sure you can go by a rough order of magnitude scale... If you have gross headings that are many orders of magnitude larger than others, your best bet is to look in those large ones for waste first. Scientific research would have to be eliminated tens or hundreds of times over to get to a level of savings that could probably be removed easier from waste in headings like defense and law enforcement and corporate subsidy.
        protomyth 14y ago
        Mathematically, sure. Math isn't the problem in politics, territory is. All the little things add to people's territory and patronage. It also keeps people from making the big cuts. We need a culture change to spend the money responsibly and it will only happen when "it's only a couple of million" is removed from our vocabulary. As an aside in 2011, Defense and international security assistance is 20% of the budget. Social Security spending was higher than that (731 vs 718 billion). Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP was a bit bigger at $769 billion. The rest of the safety net style programs was $466 billion. $230 billion was spent paying interest on the national debt.
  - 14y ago
- kcima 14y ago
  I updated my comment to communicate better what I was asking. I do fully support this kind of research. I am interested in the technological directions and discoveries for society that this research is expected to provide. It seems odd that politicians who don't necessarily have specific interest in theoretical physics are convinced to fund a project of this size and scope without tangible benefits.
  - grego 14y ago
    It's basic research. Some countries' politicians were convinced that you need basic research to do applied research. It's also a great international collaborative project, where subcontractors from many countries get actual money making contracts to build the required detectors, magnets, etc.
cdjarrell 14y ago
We've reached the point in scientific discoveries where you can't expect an apple falling on a scientist's head to eventually lead to an explanation (I know this story isn't true). The proposed theory is more complex and therefore requires lots of money. You have no idea what this potential discovery could lead to 10, 20, 50, 200 years down the road. And neither does anybody, it could be a steal. How much is the truth worth (or a glimpse at why things happen)? By the way, what was the common man's response when Newton first explained gravity? Probably, "Things fall, what more do you need to know"
- cglace 14y ago
  How much is the truth worth (or a glimpse at why things happen)? If I'm starving? It's not worth more than a meal.
ColinWright 14y ago
Understanding of how things work, so we can bend them to our will. Better understanding of the standard model will buy us many things, most of which we don't yet realise will be interesting, useful, fun, exciting, and important. Better understanding of the standard model will possibly give us: * Quantum computers * Room temperature superconductors * Substances strong enough to build a space elevator 40 years ago we had no idea how to build 'planes that were bigger, stronger, faster, and more efficient than the ones we had, and yet people did the basic research anyway, just because they thought it might be useful. They found composite structures, and we got the 'planes and other things. The metals used in car engines have improved enormously, in part because of what was seen at the time as being basic research that might not really go anywhere. But in the end it's basic science, and we don't always know how - or whether - it will repay itself. For every advance that has gained us something there are other efforts that have led nowhere, but we never know in advance which will be which. That's the nature of research -- you don't know what in hell you're doing. -- 'Doc' Edgerton If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it? -- Albert Einstein So who knows what will come out of this. The research could give us teleportation, or Star Trek-style replicators, or dirt-cheap solar energy harvesting paints that cars can run on, or electricity storage devices, or plastics that can be made without oil, or entirely new substances, just as plastics once were. I have no idea how old you are, but I'm fifty, and stuff exists now that didn't when I was in my teens, partly because of people doing basic research.
- kcima 14y ago
  I understand (somewhat) and agree fully with the value of this research. (Great specifics by the way.) I am hearing from you that we have no idea what we will discover, but it could be anything and likely something really cool. The question I have is really how it was explained to politicians and decision makers who are not scientific. Was it really, "with this research we could discover anything from teleportation to a better way to make toasters", or was it something more specific? I currently see our governments doing everything they can to limit discovery and creativity because they don't understand basic science or the Internet. It is interesting and heartening to me that a project like this currently exists and is mostly not questioned.
Achshar 14y ago
I am no physicist, but i have been following particle physics as a hobby. And as i understand it, there is this standard model which which describes how particles behave and groups them, and hence like periodic table (extreme simplification) helps predict particles that have not been discovered yet but that can be proved following the standard model and it's calculations. But There needs to be confirmation that standard model is itself correct. One way is to find particles that the model predicts. If they are found then we know that the standard model is in fact correct and the other implications can be that much more "correct". So Higgs boson will not only explain why/how matter has mass and hence makes everything possible but it will also re affirm that standard model is on track, for now.
- anamax 14y ago
  > One way is to find particles that the model predicts. If they are found then we know that the standard model is in fact correct. Actually, finding those particles doesn't tell us that the standard model is correct. Finding those particles just tells us that it doesn't have some specific errors. One difference between science and math is that you can't prove anything "correct" in science.
  - binarycheese 14y ago
    "One difference between science and math is that you can't prove anything "correct" in science." Excellent analogy
  - Achshar 14y ago
    Yes, i think over simplification killed it. The existence of higgs will only tell us that the model was not wrong in it's prediction and will hence increase the credibility and chances of success of other predictions. I stand corrected.
  - CamperBob2 14y ago
    One difference between science and math is that you can't prove anything "correct" in science. To be fair, you can only prove something "correct" in math to the extent that it agrees with the underlying axioms. In broader scientific fields, an assertion is just as "correct" if it agrees with the underlying models. In mathematics, you can challenge the validity of axioms, which is usually a pointless thing to do, or you can point out, as Goedel did, that some assertions will remain unprovable within any given framework of axioms. So the math guys know where they stand, at least. In many areas of science, the experimental method is becoming less and less useful over time. Particle physicists need to know how well the Standard Model agrees with reality, because so much of their future work will depend on assumptions that can only be tested against the model. (We won't see a bigger-than-LHC facility constructed anytime soon, put it that way, and that was the case even before the recent global financial problems came to light.) Similarly, the work of climatologists can be, and has been, attacked because it depends on models, and the map is not the territory. As with the Standard Model of particle physics, an assertion can be shown to be unequivocally true or false within the bounds of a given climate model, but not in reality, because we only have one Earth to experiment with. In both climatology and particle physics, the lab door is now locked. The models are all we have to go by, so it's really important that we get them right.
modarts 14y ago
This is actually a pretty shortsighted perspective. The understanding of the mechanism responsible for giving all particles the property of mass will have far reaching consequences for further research and technology in the future. I'm pretty sure that the invention of much of the communication technologies we have today were not readily predicted in the mid-1800's when Maxwell was developing EM theory.
- jeffdavis 14y ago
  Coming up with applications of the Higgs Boson can make it easier to discover. If the thing works, that indicates that the theory is correct.
mcguire 14y ago
You've just discovered the fundamental question about basic research.
TamDenholm 14y ago
The benefit of this is we get something that is invaluable, discovery. We discover things that may have no practical application at all, but we discovered it, then someone might come along in 1, 100, 10000 years that has a use for it, but only because it's been discovered. X-rays, electricity, penicillin we're all discoved with no practical application in mind.
- dr42 14y ago
  Not even remotely true about penicillin, I'm pretty sure that when Flemming discovered penicillin, since he was a biologist and a pharmacologist he had a pretty good idea of its practical application. x-rays, maybe, but even electricity im doubtful of. While it may not have been possible then to predict all the uses of electricity, i'm pretty sure someone had the idea of using it's power to, well, power things...
  - aqme28 14y ago
    For thousands of years the only application electricity had was that you could rub fur and amber together and then they would attract small objects. The word electricity actually comes from the Greek word for amber. So your point about Penicillin might be correct, but you are completely wrong about X-rays and electricity.
  - btilly 14y ago
    Actually Flemming did not. He did the research, he published, and the publication sat for 12 years until a couple of other people came along, and tried to build on it by making a practical product out of it. Also after penicillin was discovered, researchers going back found evidence that other scientists had encountered it, and had failed to see that it had potential. About electricity, Maxwell (who unified electricity and magnetism in one set of equations) when asked to justify the value of his work famously replied, "To tell you the truth we don't do it because it is useful but because it's amusing." In retelling the story he added, "Would it be any good to ask a mother what practical use her baby is?" This is a clear demonstration that the scientists studying electricity in the early days did not know what practical utility their work would have. (Though the connection between electricity and magnetism today drives generators and electric motors all over the world, and the prediction of electromagnetic waves lead to the understanding of what light really is, and to the development of the telegraph, radio, television, etc, etc.)
nilaykumar 14y ago
There is no known outcome. "what are our governments buying for us?": - knowledge - possible future applications It's that simple. That's always how fundamental research works. How politicians were convinced, I don't know - that's an excellent question.
elorant 14y ago
Without quantum mechanics exploration you wouldn’t have a transistor, which means no computer or television. Furthermore you can say goodbye to lasers and all the changes they brought to medical operations-for example all eye surgery today is done using lasers. So while the discovery of the Boson particle per se might not have a direct impact in our lives, the more we understand particle physics as a whole the better machines we will be able to build in the future which will definitely change the way we live.
mortenjorck 14y ago
Basically, we just keep discovering things like this until they flesh out our understanding of a whole bunch of interrelated domains enough to build a warp drive. I'm serious.
xbryanx 14y ago
Discover magazine hosted a conversation about this very question. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/03/20/technological-applications-of-the-higgs-boson/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/03/20/...
obtu 14y ago
Here is the CERN's “we found the Higgs, what comes next?” press release: http://press.web.cern.ch/press/background/B11-Higgs_understanding_begins_en.html http://press.web.cern.ch/press/background/B11-Higgs_understa...
mcpie 14y ago
Part of the answer is a conscious decision on the EU level to 'become the best at science'. That sounds awfully vague and usually is an empty promise in politics, but in this case there was broad support for such an effort (plenty of money was available, the USA seemed to be slacking off, CERN had proven its worth etc etc).
curiousfiddler 14y ago
I am not a physics researcher, but based on the videos that I have seen and whatever articles I have read, the most fascinating takeaway for me are: 1. That mass is not an intrinsic property of matter; rather it is acquired by the particle's interaction with Higgs field. 2. A massless particle travels at the speed of light. When controlled, this has the potential to result in super crazy outcomes (super fast transfer of matter and energy etc). PS: Please correct my interpretation if it looks wrong.

by kcima 14y ago

sophacles 14y ago

At a 9 Billion USD price tag, what are our governments buying for us? There must be something beyond scientific intellectual curiosity. Those of us with this curiosity may be happy to pay for it, but how were politicians convinced? What value will this provide to the governments of the world who made the decision to purchase this answer. False dilemma. When we spend trillions of dollars a year to kill people in the name of stopping violence, 10^-3 of that for curiosity is not something that is rational to attack. Particularly when exploration for curiosity's sake has led to plenty of demonstrably beneficial results.

protomyth 14y ago
"Your wasting a lot of money here, so you shouldn't mind wasting a lesser amount here" Government funding needs to justify itself, not against other uses for the money. The bills have come due and we need to cut out what isn't vital. 9 billion could have paid a lot of health insurance policies. I'm glad they valued this, but it needs to be valuable based on its own merit.
- sophacles 14y ago
  Im not saying that. Im saying if you care about waste, quit attacking minor inefficiencies when instead, there is a giant one right there. I have no problem talking about whether some money spent on science has value, right after we deal with the huge money sink in other places. It's basic triage. Don't waste our time worrying about pocket change when you're burning hundred dollar bills because the smoke is pretty.
  - protomyth 14y ago
    The problem with most government budgets is that most of the problems are the pocket change. All the little things need to be cleaned up to get at the bigger issues.
    - sophacles 14y ago
      I'm not a mathematician, but I am pretty sure you can go by a rough order of magnitude scale... If you have gross headings that are many orders of magnitude larger than others, your best bet is to look in those large ones for waste first. Scientific research would have to be eliminated tens or hundreds of times over to get to a level of savings that could probably be removed easier from waste in headings like defense and law enforcement and corporate subsidy.
      - protomyth 14y ago
        Mathematically, sure. Math isn't the problem in politics, territory is. All the little things add to people's territory and patronage. It also keeps people from making the big cuts. We need a culture change to spend the money responsibly and it will only happen when "it's only a couple of million" is removed from our vocabulary. As an aside in 2011, Defense and international security assistance is 20% of the budget. Social Security spending was higher than that (731 vs 718 billion). Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP was a bit bigger at $769 billion. The rest of the safety net style programs was $466 billion. $230 billion was spent paying interest on the national debt.
- 14y ago
kcima 14y ago
I updated my comment to communicate better what I was asking. I do fully support this kind of research. I am interested in the technological directions and discoveries for society that this research is expected to provide. It seems odd that politicians who don't necessarily have specific interest in theoretical physics are convinced to fund a project of this size and scope without tangible benefits.
- grego 14y ago
  It's basic research. Some countries' politicians were convinced that you need basic research to do applied research. It's also a great international collaborative project, where subcontractors from many countries get actual money making contracts to build the required detectors, magnets, etc.

cdjarrell 14y ago

We've reached the point in scientific discoveries where you can't expect an apple falling on a scientist's head to eventually lead to an explanation (I know this story isn't true). The proposed theory is more complex and therefore requires lots of money. You have no idea what this potential discovery could lead to 10, 20, 50, 200 years down the road. And neither does anybody, it could be a steal. How much is the truth worth (or a glimpse at why things happen)? By the way, what was the common man's response when Newton first explained gravity? Probably, "Things fall, what more do you need to know"

cglace 14y ago
How much is the truth worth (or a glimpse at why things happen)? If I'm starving? It's not worth more than a meal.

ColinWright 14y ago

Understanding of how things work, so we can bend them to our will. Better understanding of the standard model will buy us many things, most of which we don't yet realise will be interesting, useful, fun, exciting, and important. Better understanding of the standard model will possibly give us: * Quantum computers * Room temperature superconductors * Substances strong enough to build a space elevator 40 years ago we had no idea how to build 'planes that were bigger, stronger, faster, and more efficient than the ones we had, and yet people did the basic research anyway, just because they thought it might be useful. They found composite structures, and we got the 'planes and other things. The metals used in car engines have improved enormously, in part because of what was seen at the time as being basic research that might not really go anywhere. But in the end it's basic science, and we don't always know how - or whether - it will repay itself. For every advance that has gained us something there are other efforts that have led nowhere, but we never know in advance which will be which. That's the nature of research -- you don't know what in hell you're doing. -- 'Doc' Edgerton If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it? -- Albert Einstein So who knows what will come out of this. The research could give us teleportation, or Star Trek-style replicators, or dirt-cheap solar energy harvesting paints that cars can run on, or electricity storage devices, or plastics that can be made without oil, or entirely new substances, just as plastics once were. I have no idea how old you are, but I'm fifty, and stuff exists now that didn't when I was in my teens, partly because of people doing basic research.

kcima 14y ago
I understand (somewhat) and agree fully with the value of this research. (Great specifics by the way.) I am hearing from you that we have no idea what we will discover, but it could be anything and likely something really cool. The question I have is really how it was explained to politicians and decision makers who are not scientific. Was it really, "with this research we could discover anything from teleportation to a better way to make toasters", or was it something more specific? I currently see our governments doing everything they can to limit discovery and creativity because they don't understand basic science or the Internet. It is interesting and heartening to me that a project like this currently exists and is mostly not questioned.

Achshar 14y ago

I am no physicist, but i have been following particle physics as a hobby. And as i understand it, there is this standard model which which describes how particles behave and groups them, and hence like periodic table (extreme simplification) helps predict particles that have not been discovered yet but that can be proved following the standard model and it's calculations. But There needs to be confirmation that standard model is itself correct. One way is to find particles that the model predicts. If they are found then we know that the standard model is in fact correct and the other implications can be that much more "correct". So Higgs boson will not only explain why/how matter has mass and hence makes everything possible but it will also re affirm that standard model is on track, for now.

anamax 14y ago
> One way is to find particles that the model predicts. If they are found then we know that the standard model is in fact correct. Actually, finding those particles doesn't tell us that the standard model is correct. Finding those particles just tells us that it doesn't have some specific errors. One difference between science and math is that you can't prove anything "correct" in science.
- binarycheese 14y ago
  "One difference between science and math is that you can't prove anything "correct" in science." Excellent analogy
- Achshar 14y ago
  Yes, i think over simplification killed it. The existence of higgs will only tell us that the model was not wrong in it's prediction and will hence increase the credibility and chances of success of other predictions. I stand corrected.
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  One difference between science and math is that you can't prove anything "correct" in science. To be fair, you can only prove something "correct" in math to the extent that it agrees with the underlying axioms. In broader scientific fields, an assertion is just as "correct" if it agrees with the underlying models. In mathematics, you can challenge the validity of axioms, which is usually a pointless thing to do, or you can point out, as Goedel did, that some assertions will remain unprovable within any given framework of axioms. So the math guys know where they stand, at least. In many areas of science, the experimental method is becoming less and less useful over time. Particle physicists need to know how well the Standard Model agrees with reality, because so much of their future work will depend on assumptions that can only be tested against the model. (We won't see a bigger-than-LHC facility constructed anytime soon, put it that way, and that was the case even before the recent global financial problems came to light.) Similarly, the work of climatologists can be, and has been, attacked because it depends on models, and the map is not the territory. As with the Standard Model of particle physics, an assertion can be shown to be unequivocally true or false within the bounds of a given climate model, but not in reality, because we only have one Earth to experiment with. In both climatology and particle physics, the lab door is now locked. The models are all we have to go by, so it's really important that we get them right.

modarts 14y ago

This is actually a pretty shortsighted perspective. The understanding of the mechanism responsible for giving all particles the property of mass will have far reaching consequences for further research and technology in the future. I'm pretty sure that the invention of much of the communication technologies we have today were not readily predicted in the mid-1800's when Maxwell was developing EM theory.

jeffdavis 14y ago
Coming up with applications of the Higgs Boson can make it easier to discover. If the thing works, that indicates that the theory is correct.

mcguire 14y ago

You've just discovered the fundamental question about basic research.

TamDenholm 14y ago

The benefit of this is we get something that is invaluable, discovery. We discover things that may have no practical application at all, but we discovered it, then someone might come along in 1, 100, 10000 years that has a use for it, but only because it's been discovered. X-rays, electricity, penicillin we're all discoved with no practical application in mind.

dr42 14y ago
Not even remotely true about penicillin, I'm pretty sure that when Flemming discovered penicillin, since he was a biologist and a pharmacologist he had a pretty good idea of its practical application. x-rays, maybe, but even electricity im doubtful of. While it may not have been possible then to predict all the uses of electricity, i'm pretty sure someone had the idea of using it's power to, well, power things...
- aqme28 14y ago
  For thousands of years the only application electricity had was that you could rub fur and amber together and then they would attract small objects. The word electricity actually comes from the Greek word for amber. So your point about Penicillin might be correct, but you are completely wrong about X-rays and electricity.
- btilly 14y ago
  Actually Flemming did not. He did the research, he published, and the publication sat for 12 years until a couple of other people came along, and tried to build on it by making a practical product out of it. Also after penicillin was discovered, researchers going back found evidence that other scientists had encountered it, and had failed to see that it had potential. About electricity, Maxwell (who unified electricity and magnetism in one set of equations) when asked to justify the value of his work famously replied, "To tell you the truth we don't do it because it is useful but because it's amusing." In retelling the story he added, "Would it be any good to ask a mother what practical use her baby is?" This is a clear demonstration that the scientists studying electricity in the early days did not know what practical utility their work would have. (Though the connection between electricity and magnetism today drives generators and electric motors all over the world, and the prediction of electromagnetic waves lead to the understanding of what light really is, and to the development of the telegraph, radio, television, etc, etc.)

nilaykumar 14y ago

There is no known outcome. "what are our governments buying for us?": - knowledge - possible future applications It's that simple. That's always how fundamental research works. How politicians were convinced, I don't know - that's an excellent question.

elorant 14y ago

Without quantum mechanics exploration you wouldn’t have a transistor, which means no computer or television. Furthermore you can say goodbye to lasers and all the changes they brought to medical operations-for example all eye surgery today is done using lasers. So while the discovery of the Boson particle per se might not have a direct impact in our lives, the more we understand particle physics as a whole the better machines we will be able to build in the future which will definitely change the way we live.

mortenjorck 14y ago

Basically, we just keep discovering things like this until they flesh out our understanding of a whole bunch of interrelated domains enough to build a warp drive. I'm serious.

xbryanx 14y ago

Discover magazine hosted a conversation about this very question. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/03/20/technological-applications-of-the-higgs-boson/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/03/20/...

obtu 14y ago

Here is the CERN's “we found the Higgs, what comes next?” press release: http://press.web.cern.ch/press/background/B11-Higgs_understanding_begins_en.html http://press.web.cern.ch/press/background/B11-Higgs_understa...

mcpie 14y ago

Part of the answer is a conscious decision on the EU level to 'become the best at science'. That sounds awfully vague and usually is an empty promise in politics, but in this case there was broad support for such an effort (plenty of money was available, the USA seemed to be slacking off, CERN had proven its worth etc etc).

curiousfiddler 14y ago

I am not a physics researcher, but based on the videos that I have seen and whatever articles I have read, the most fascinating takeaway for me are: 1. That mass is not an intrinsic property of matter; rather it is acquired by the particle's interaction with Higgs field. 2. A massless particle travels at the speed of light. When controlled, this has the potential to result in super crazy outcomes (super fast transfer of matter and energy etc). PS: Please correct my interpretation if it looks wrong.