Interviews: Ask Physicist Giovanni Organtini About the Possible Higgs Boson Disc 170
Giovanni Organtini of Italy's National Institute of Nuclear Physics (well, Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) has agreed to answer questions about the recent observations of a particle consistent with the Higgs Boson. Dr. Organtini is part of the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. He is careful to note that while the researchers "[believe] that this new particle, with a mass 125 times that of a proton, is the famous Higgs boson," they "need to study that new particle more deeply in the next months to be conclusive on that. Organtini likes free software (he's written Linux device drivers, too) and has his own physics-heavy YouTube channel, mostly in Italian. Please confine questions to one per post, but feel free to ask as many as you'd like.
The Best of the Worst Science Reporting? (Score:5, Interesting)
Open Data? (Score:5, Interesting)
The future of the Higgs (Score:5, Interesting)
While I know it is rather early to comment, what do you think the future applications of today's research into Higgs Boson will be?
Don't be afraid to be a little bit sky-high. I for one am already fantasising about space ships propelled by manipulation of the Higgs field on a local scale.
I'm only asking because, a century ago the electron was discovered and nobody was quite sure what to do with it. And it runs the world.
Is it higgsy? (Score:5, Interesting)
What success or failure factors can/should/will be used to determine whether or not the new particle is actually the higgs, or something else unexpected?
When Does the Particle Hunt End? (Score:5, Interesting)
mass for a mass-giving particle (Score:4, Interesting)
What does it mean to say a particle that gives all other particles mass...has mass itself?
Applying the discover in engineering & tech (Score:5, Interesting)
Dr. Joe Incandela of UC Santa Barbara and CMS director said recently of the CERN Higgs results:
"This is so far out on a limb, **I have no idea where it will be applied**, We're talking about something **we have no idea** what the implications are and **may not be directly applied for centuries**."
(source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/04/stephen-hawking-and-higgs-boson-bet_n_1650024.html [huffingtonpost.com])
My questions: Do you agree that the direct application of the findings are as nebulous and abstract as he describes?
Please discuss the implications of your answer and how they relate to the economic choices of how humans use their scientific resources.
Should I Expect More Theories or Less Theories? (Score:4, Interesting)
What's the future of particle physics? (Score:5, Interesting)
Once this particle is examined, and let's assume it's the elusive Higgs, is there a continuing reason for large particle accellerators?
Basically, I'm asking in ignorance. If this confirms the standard model, what do you see for discoveries of this nature in the.future?
Question - Pragmatics (Score:4, Interesting)
In regards to the discovery of the Higgs Boson, what is an example of a practical application of this discovery. I find that physics is best explained with real-world examples.
Re:mass for a mass-giving particle (Score:4, Interesting)
The Higgs mechanism is what gives particles mass, not to be confused with the Higgs boson ;)
Two different things, named the same because of how related they are.
Inertial mass vs. gravitational mass (Score:5, Interesting)
The Higgs boson is famously associated with how particles acquire a 'mass'. But mass is, in itself, an interesting property. As I understand it, the Higgs boson is only associated with inertial mass. If this is so, do you expect gravitational mass and inertial mass to be always the same? If so, would you speculate on the mechanism that ensures this is true?
Re:mass for a mass-giving particle (Score:3, Interesting)
Intuitive physics breaks down, so I'll try the best I can to explain this.
In quantum field theory, stuff goes down differently, very differently. The fundamental things (entities, stuffs) are fields. You're perhaps intimately familiar with one of them, the EM field. And I'm sure you know about wave-particle duality, so this next part may make sense. Photons are thought to be oscillations in the EM field. But of course, go into the details and things get loopy.
A proposed ubiquitous Higgs field is one of these such fundamental stuffs, and the Higgs boson is to the Higgs field as a photon is to the EM field (not quite the same, though).
Higgs and the Ether (Score:4, Interesting)
Would this then be best described as an ether, only instead of matter traveling through the ether, matter is manifestations of the ether (fields) itself. Would this also than mean that the motion of matter is not a physical movement of a "particle" but instead the transfer of the "excitement" of a field from one spot of the field to another?
And what, if any, implications does this disocvery have for unifying gravity or other areas of physics?
Significance of Higgs Boson mass? (Score:4, Interesting)
As I understand it, a Higgs Boson compatible with the standard model could have been found at a range of different masses, and the search for it has involved searching the possible mass range until it was either discovered or not.
Assuming that this new discovery is indeed the Higgs Boson as predicted and compatible with the standard model, what is the significance of the particular mass that it has been found to have? Are there any macro-scale predictions that depend on its mass?
How do you feel about... (Score:4, Interesting)
SSC (Score:4, Interesting)
Had the superconducting supercolider (SSC) been completed in the USA in the 1990s, would it have found this particle? Even with a 20 year technology advantage, LHC has taken some time to get there.
what are the next incremental follow-ons? (Score:4, Interesting)
I also heard there could be a family of Higgs bosons, so we may look for others?
What next for LHC? (Score:4, Interesting)
Assuming that this new particle is in fact the Standard Model Higgs boson, what more can we expect to discover with CMS? Is there any new physics you expect to be within the reach of CMS? Or this is pretty much the end?
I know this question is unanswerable, but your best guess would make me happy. I'm actually very worried by the prospects of running out of (falsifiable) theories to test...
dumb question (Score:4, Interesting)
This may sound really dumb but.... (Score:4, Interesting)
... the answers to the dumbest questions are sometimes the most interesting :) I understand that the Higgs is responsible for giving mass to all the other particles, then it must be *everywhere*. Why is it so difficult to detect? Why does it take such a staggeringly powerful supercollider to find what ought to be as common as the electron or proton?
Also, I can't help but to visualize particles as something like billiard balls while I'm aware they're only mathematical abstractions from our point of view and that experiments like the double-slit experiment refute the billiard-ball model... is there a way to visualize the Higgs to make the answer to my previous question easier to understand?
Analogies to magnetic and electric fields (Score:3, Interesting)