The World in 2012
God's particle, aka Higgs boson
A glimpse of Higgs for Big Science's big year...
Dec 14th 2011, 18:26 by J.A.
THE news that scientists at CERN, the particle physics laboratory straddling the border between France and Switzerland, may have glimpsed the Higgs boson—the so-called “God particle”—fills Cassandra with a mix of amazement and baffledom. This is doubtless at least in part the consequence of his indolence during science classes in the distant days when he was a schoolboy. Reverting to the first person, I may dimly understand that the Higgs particle gives the universe—including us poor humans—mass. And without mass there would (I think) be no existence…But frankly, readers who need real information should turn to my colleague at Babbage.
At the same time, I warmly recommend readers—even science-duds like me—to turn to an article in The World in 2012 by Rolf Heuer, the director-general of CERN. Its title is Big Science’s big year, which will be an understatement if the Higgs particle is finally discovered. Herr Heuer (pictured) observes that
Even those most esoteric branches of physics, quantum mechanics and relativity, have found their way into our everyday lives. Although few users of mobile phones and GPS systems may realise it, their favourite gadgets rely on the early-20th-century science of the likes of Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein.
But he continues, to the embarrassment of this particular Cassandra,
And there’s the rub: we as a global society are increasingly dependent on science, yet increasingly ignorant of it. This is not a healthy state of affairs, and it is one that science must address, both by engaging more with the wider world and by pursuing the globalisation of science more vigorously than ever.
He is, of course, right—and CERN (which, incidentally, was the source of the World Wide Web) is proof with its international body of researchers that science advances when scientists ignore national boundaries, be they physical or psychological.
This blog accompanies The World in 2012, our almanac of predictions for the year ahead. The blog is named after the mythological Cassandra, who was cursed by Apollo to make prophecies that were accurate, but disbelieved.
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Readers' comments
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2012 will be Big. We will no longer have a Universal Speed Limit. And it was the experiments at CERN that helped Fix Einstein's e=mc2
http://jetsrock.wordpress.com
Not sure I agree that ignorance of science by non scientists is a problem. Science is so broad and even within the sciences there is huge ignorance of specific scientific disciplines. I happen to be a genetic epidemiologist and have a poor grasp of other biological sciences, such as ecology, never mind physics. I would argue that specialisation has been pretty good for humanity. It´s what makes our society possible. e.g. I have no idea how to wire up my home; that´s for the electrician. Maybe non-scientists should focus on being better non-scientists (in whatever job they perform).
Either way one can suppose this week's events will engender the belief in God or repudiate it, which is the great irony of science, as much as it seeks to dispel the notion of supernatural forces at work it ultimately forces one to wonder if that is ultimately what is at work, thus bringing science and the idea of God closer together as much as science may wish to dispense with it.
http://scallywagandvagabond.com/2011/12/higgs-boson-is-this-evidence-of-...
Let me tell you why it is not possible for Higgs boson to be there, because there cannot be any fields in a realistic understanding of the natural world. Fields were devised in the times of Maxwell to comprehend pre quantum phenomena. Every event has to have a particle/wave explanation, no field would fill in the details where a postulation is weak. It's a non quantum sub ev world out there. Gravitation and mass are due to a very different form of particle or particles, no resemblance with Higgs. Look for DCE research in Sweden, if you want to see the shape of the things to come. Eventually STR will be marginalized and space and mass will be seen as interchangeable.
Then you cannot even remove liquid helium from the LHC tunnel and talk of removing water from the pond, then your pond is full of magnetic fields and the distortions that the Earth's gravitation brings to the surrounding space. The physical world is much more complex than a number of particles put together like bricks to define it's existence. A copper atom sized Higgs boson is as laughable as the Earth centred universe of the Ptolemic construct. The Church and its professional scientists spent centuries to not only defend it but to take it to greater mathematical heights before finally crashing.
Finally, faster than light Neutrinoes and Higgs both cannot coexist -- either one has to be wrong. It's DCE research and superluminal speed which has the potential of breaking current scientific barriers, rather than finding a nebulous statistical dual peak for a Higgs, which well could be due to many other anomalies, one that LHC could not decipher is that of the UFOs.
I thought DARPA was the source of the World Wide Web. No?
Actually, no! DARPA was the source of the internet, whose birth long pre-dated the web, which was basically created by Tim Berners-Lee (rather belatedly knighted for his efforts by Queen Elizabeth in 2004).
No, that's a common misconception. Al Gore invented the internet.