posted 13 years ago
sigh. I'm Thea's husband, and a particle accelerator operator at Fermilab. I'm one of the guys running the machines that were looking for the Higgs. We came within a gnats keister of finding the Higgs, but out data clairity was about 5% off, so we couldn't officially say we found it. To put it in better terms; we found boson droppings, CERN found the body. (granted it was rotten and picked over, but there it is) After Fermilab's work over the years we were able to narrow down the energy region that it existed in. It seemed to be just out of our reach. This is why the LHC was built to fill that gap and go on to even more boson and top quark work.
nAnyway, there it was, pretty much where we all expected to find it, we just needed a better microscope to see it.
Now some myth busting.
The Higgs isn't quite what gives things mass, it is another stop on the road to figuring that out. Keep in mind, this announcement is only that we found it, not that we understand it, not experimentally at least. We have a good grasp of the math, but that is so hard even for the big brains that it can be a little off. This is why we needed to find the energy range that it lives in, not an exact number. We were close theoretically. Now we have to find the properties experimentally.
We plowed greater than 250GeV protons AND antiprotons into lead all the time. Since the 70s in fact. not much happened except that I and my coworkers had to figure out why the beam went there. We drive particles through high B fields, things denser than lead all the time. We call it targets when done on purpose, and shielding when it isn't.
All right, black holes? Even if one were created on that small of a level it would not have enough mass to attract the particle next to it. CERN has a great video on their PR page that explains all that.
Lets see, as for controlling the Higgs, well not yet at least. We are at the limits of detector physics now. The smaller the particle, the bigger the detector needs to be. To get that small, and manipulate such short lived particles such as this would mean making a device that operates on a purely quantum level. We are not there yet. In fact even the greatest science fiction writers dance around this (Doc Smith for example). What I mean is we're a long way off.
So, does this mean that this search is meaningless? Well, just because the destination has no practical use, besides better understanding of the universe doesn't mean that what we develop during that search isn't useful. The technology we have developed to build the machines, detectors and ancillary components is being brought into use all over the world. From better computer programming to communications tech. Scanning in medicine and commerce owe a lot to the boffins at physics labs. Yes from MRIs to the internet, Particle Accelerator physicists and technicians are working every day to make your lives better. (start educational film music here)
Chris Smashing atoms into things since 2000 Olsen.
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