Higgs' Boson? - We Have A Discovery

[Vile Consort]

I am always suspicious of big announcements.
Politics everywhere, even in the lab.

So when you are offered an MRI scan to diagnose the severe pain in your insides you will be turning it down on the grounds that it's just politics?

[Budapest]

What do you mean - purportedly? Why are they really closing it down? And how do you know?

Budget cuts force CERN to shut accelerators for year

But please, maybe we can all talk about quantum physics, because I find that much more fun.

Can your cat, let's call it Fluffy, really exist at opposite ends of the universe at the same time?

Could Fluffy suddenly turn into a blade of grass?

And the thing about Fluffy is, how does its brain work?

[Vile Consort]

Budget cuts force CERN to shut accelerators for year

But the reason they are shutting it down is still to do the upgrade to double the collision energy to 14TeV. It's just going to take longer than planned because of the budget cuts. There is no "purported" about it.

[teamsaint]

So when you are offered an MRI scan to diagnose the severe pain in your insides you will be turning it down on the grounds that it's just politics?

Sorry, that logic completely defeats me.
There is a big leap there !!

[Quarky]

Budget cuts force CERN to shut accelerators for year

But please, maybe we can all talk about quantum physics, because I find that much more fun.

Can your cat, let's call it Fluffy, really exist at opposite ends of the universe at the same time?

Could Fluffy suddenly turn into a blade of grass?

And the thing about Fluffy is, how does its brain work?

Agreed about quantum physics, I've always found it fascinating, to the extent it can be understood - but I discovered long ago that I can't follow all the twists and turns of the best brains of science.

However there does appear a degree of arrogance in physicists in that physics was al ways regarded as the senior science, and that other sciences were simply subsets of the overall physical architecture. However that view is not valid in this day and age. Biotechnology, neuroscience and computer science in my view examples of more important areas of study.

So that is where I part company with Budapest in the example of fluffy the cat. Maybe one atom of the cat might exist in two places at once. But the whole cat taken apart and reassembled at the other end of the universe, hopefully on a biologically favourable planet with plenty to eat? I find such examples have no more validity than the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation, or Lateral thinking's philosophy, which I do not understand at all.

So what I'm saying is that it is a leap too far to go from theories built on lab. experiments to a whole world philosophy.

[Resurrection Man]

...... electronic transistors can only work because of quantum superposition (ie, particles that can exist in two or more states at the same time). .....

I have Googled and Googled and can find zero reference to transistors working because of quantum superposition. Plenty on quantum computers but those are not what you are referring to. So, please put me out of misery and point me at a link that substantiates your statement.

[Quarky]

I have Googled and Googled and can find zero reference to transistors working because of quantum superposition. Plenty on quantum computers but those are not what you are referring to. So, please put me out of misery and point me at a link that substantiates your statement.

In absence of Budapest's reply, this may give you a starting point:

http://www.pbs.org/transistor/science/info/qmsemi.html

"Quantum Mechanics Meets Semiconductors 1920s and 1930s
In the 1920s, Louis de Broglie in France was studying the new science theories of quantum mechanics. He knew that physicists now believed light waves--usually thought of as a constantly fluctuating electromagnetic wave--could sometimes behave like particles as hard and precise as billiard balls. He realized that perhaps the reverse was true too. Perhaps particles such as electrons could sometimes behave like waves.

Another scientist, Swiss theorist Erwin Schroedinger incorporated this mathematically into a set of equations. These--known, not surprisingly, as Schroedinger equations--could descibe with utmost precision all the behavior of electrons and other atomic particles.

In the 1930s, these equations became fully accepted as the scientific community tried to apply them to complicated systems of atoms like those found in crystals and metals. Physicists--usually professors and students in universities--threw themselves into the task of analyzing these basic structures. Key steps were taken in Germany, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union among other places.

When scientists began to think of the electrons in crystals as waves, they discovered fascinating, and often surprising, new patterns of movement. This was behavior unlike anything that simple particles might do. For instance, if the usually perfectly-ordered atoms in a crystal had even a single atom out of place, the electron waves' movement as it traveled through would be seriously changed.

One of the applications for these new rules about electrons was in semiconductors--mysterious crystals that sometimes conducted electricity and sometimes didn't. Eugene Wigner and his student Frederick Seitz worked long and hard on this issue at Princeton University in the 1930s. They were the first to figure out just how these waves could make different kinds of materials conduct or not conduct electricity. (Answer: Some atoms are set up so that electron waves can easily move to the right place where they can then move through the material as a current. In others atoms the waves simply can't make the jump to the necessary location.)

Work like this laid down the ground work for the research Bell Labs would do a decade later turning a semiconductor crystal into a transistor

[Gordon]

I have Googled and Googled and can find zero reference to transistors working because of quantum superposition. Plenty on quantum computers but those are not what you are referring to. So, please put me out of misery and point me at a link that substantiates your statement.

Transistors, even in huge chips that have very small feature sizes [down to 20nm and below], are much too large to be affected significantly by quantum effects. The prospect of elephant suddnely becoming a lily is a bit remote. However, down at the Planck length in the deep structure of space particles are coming and going all the time [whatever that is at that level].

Quantum computing doesnt mean what you might think it does. There is a difference btween solid state electronics [transistors etc] and free field [Valves eg]. One day transistors in chips may well get so small that the number of electrons operating in them get too small and their beaviour becomes statistical. Then you can't guarantee the predictable behaviour of the device or a system that comprises them.

If you want a bit more authoritative info about the HB look here from a University that was heavily involved:

https://alumni.liv.ac.uk/netcommunity/enewsletters/2012/7---july-2012/elusive-higgs-boson-particle-discovered?erid=2235016&trid=cf4f99c4-9232-42f3-9451-cd101a6aecf1

[Resurrection Man]

...
Quantum computing doesnt mean what you might think it does. ....

Umm..I think it does http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer

But now TBH I am confused ! I have one post from Oddball saying that transistors are based on quantum effects and yours, Gordon, saying that they don't !

[Quarky]

Resurrection Man - don't know how much you know about Science, but let me give you my simple minded view of the situation, which is probably a bit higgledy-piggledy and will probably get me into trouble with the experts.

Firstly the principle of superposition of states is absolute key to understanding. It can be seen quite easily if an electron is regarded as a wave, where amplitude of wave varies periodically, with the amplitude of the wave representing something like the probability of actually finding the electron at that point, when viewed as a particle.
Put an electron in a box - a crystal will do nicely (actually it will not - see Bryn's later posts - but basic idea serves to illustrate). Then we have a rough and ready analogy to sound waves in a musical instrument, e.g. a flute. There will be a fundamental mode of resonance - wavelength equal to length of box - and then various overtones with wavelengths, half, one quarter etc . length of box or flute. All of these overtones will be heard simultaneously when a flute is played, that is there are sound waves existing in all the various modes of vibration.

So it is with an electron in a crystal. Viewed as a wave, it may have a fundamental mode of vibration, and higher energy overtones. We don't know which particular mode of vibration the electron is in, so we have to assume it exists in all states simultaneously, that is various states of energy with different probability for each state. That is the electron is actually in every state simultaneously - hence the states are superposed. If you try to break open the box to find out where the electron actually is , then you have a different physical arrangement.

In regard to quantum computing, and here I am relying of memory of reading one or two scientific articles, crudely put, if somehow you one could engineer two boxes, each containing an electron, together so that you could add, subtract, multiply etc the various electron states, then you have a parallel computer of ginormous capability. That is we do not put an electron current into the processor representing only one, two or three etc(binary logic of course), but instead we have a minute electrical signal representing all various possibilities. So we can compute simultaneously on all possible numerical values, working on the possible electron states rather than "macro" electron currents.

That at any rate is my recollection.

A couple of articles on Quantum Computing - I find practical articles are much more understandable than the Wikipedia entry you quoted:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/key-step-toward-a-silicon-quantum-computer

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/practical-quantum-computers-creep-closer-to-reality

and this is the one I was looking for:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/design/the-trap-technique/0

[Resurrection Man]

Hi Oddball and thank you for taking the time to make both posts. I did follow both of them quite happily, thanks, but your question re my knowledge of science was well-put.

My comment really reflected the fact that your posts were in support of Budapest's supposition on the one hand but Gordon, on the other, refuted this.

[Budapest]

I have Googled and Googled and can find zero reference to transistors working because of quantum superposition. Plenty on quantum computers but those are not what you are referring to. So, please put me out of misery and point me at a link that substantiates your statement.

Try searching for 'field effect transistors' which are used almost entirely in integrated circuits (ie, computers), and in particular 'modulation field effect Transistors'.

Following your comments I have also done a search on this. There's not much out there, is there! I'll continue to search and if I come across anything that explains it without tens of thousands of words of whoffle I'll post the link here.

[Bryn]

http://curiosity.discovery.com/topic/applications-of-quantum-mechanics/10-real-world-applications-of-quantum-mechanics1.htm

[Bryn]

Try searching for 'field effect transistors' which are used almost entirely in integrated circuits (ie, computers), and in particular 'modulation field effect Transistors'.

Following your comments I have also done a search on this. There's not much out there, is there! I'll continue to search and if I come across anything that explains it without tens of thousands of words of whoffle I'll post the link here.

The question was rather more general than being limited to FETs. It's not difficult to find articles relating to the relationship between quantum mechanics and the early development of the transistor.

Chapters 13 and 14 of Volume 3 of Feynman's Lectures on Physics deal with the matter in some detail.

http://student.fizika.org/~jsisko/Knjige/Opca%20Fizika/Feynman%20Lectures%20on%20Physics/Vol%203%20Ch%2013%20-%20Propagation%20in%20Crystal%20Lattices.pdf

http://student.fizika.org/~jsisko/Knjige/Opca%20Fizika/Feynman%20Lectures%20on%20Physics/Vol%203%20Ch%2014%20-%20Semiconductors.pdf

[Budapest]

So that is where I part company with Budapest in the example of fluffy the cat. Maybe one atom of the cat might exist in two places at once. But the whole cat taken apart and reassembled at the other end of the universe, hopefully on a biologically favourable planet with plenty to eat? I find such examples have no more validity than the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation, or Lateral thinking's philosophy, which I do not understand at all.

So what I'm saying is that it is a leap too far to go from theories built on lab. experiments to a whole world philosophy.

Oddball, I perfectly understand why many people find quantum physics to be a bit ridiculous; but think about it, physics mostly comes down to human hubris. It actually doesn't make much sense when you stand back and look at it. Ie, if they have really found Higgs boson all it does is help explain our own tiny bit of existence. It comes nowhere close to explaining 'creation'.

With regard to Fluffy the cat, who can exist at opposite ends of the universe at the same time, recent studies have shown that quantum superposition occurs in plant life as part of photosynthesis.

This weird stuff really happens. It's part of the natural world.