Higgs' Boson? - We Have A Discovery

[Gordon]

Been busy since lunchtime so saw #81 and then just seen #90. Reply to #81 will have to wait till tomorrow but I find that I think I agree with VC in #90 about his first 5 paragraphs there especially about the collapse of wave functions and Energy Conservation. That gives me some encouragement after the remarks in #81!!

Para 6: I've never read about anything that asserts that real particles occupy more than one state.

Para 7: dunno! Could happen in someone's head? Penrose wasn't too clear on the matter.

Para 8: Hmm!

[Budapest]

In the many-worlds interpretation, there would be as many universes as there are superimposed states. In any given universe, the particle is on only one place.

I would be really interested to know which of the many mainstream interpretations has a particle in two places at once. It seems to me it is only the little-known Budapest interpretation.

The Neumann/Wigner interpretation is the only interpretation that requires consciousness in order to collapse the wave function. Hardly anyone thinks it is right. And even that doesn't have the particle in two places at once.

A great post, of which I've only quoted a small part above.

But please, let's not try to blind people with science. Let's keep it simple: more than 100 years ago a bunch of scientists, who had been raised on the laws of Newton et al, suddenly realised that these laws were no longer valid; they didn't work anymore as humankind started to discover the atom.

Quantum physics didn't fit into human consciousness, except when it came to weapons of mass destruction, and so quantum physics was almost totally ignored.

It remains so to this day.

You don't need to be an 'egghead' to have an opinion about any of this. I repeat that this quantum stuff is all still theoretical, including Higgs Boson (which actually hasn't been discovered at CERN, despite all the hype).

[Gordon]

#92: Sort of with you to here [I'll leave out the laser for a simple life]:

I repeat that this quantum stuff is all still theoretical,...

NO! Lots of it is copper bottomed accurate ie it predicts precisely what we see. The fluffy stuff is in why nature does what we see. I am persuaded by Penrose and think that our present knowledge of QM is not the full story in some areas eg AI and consciousness and all that. Just another day in the science office then.


....

including Higgs Boson (which actually hasn't been discovered at CERN, despite all the hype).

Well they have some hard drives full of data about the debris of a lot of protons banging about. Some contortion of that data suggests with 5 sigma confidence that some of that debris may just be one of the possible forms of energy we expect from a Higgs. Tevatron equally sure about the uncertainty. What's half a GeV among friends? Some members of the jury mostly still at lunch at the restaurant at the end of the universe. They're not quite sure where in the universe that actually is but it could be a bubble of space-time just outside Geneva. The napkins at that restaurant have the most amazing stuff written on them.

[umslopogaas]

OK, here is the screed I promised earlier. Still cant find the copy/paste commands on this new computer, so I have printed it out and copied it back in again. Must get the lady who sold me this thing to come round again and explain how it works.


"Try some simple "quantum" arithmetic: classically 2+2=4. No doubt there. But a quantum computing machine might say"the most probable result of adding 2+2 is 4 to a certainty of 99.99999 ... 9%-or any arbitrary certainty you want which would require some special conditions being set on the quantum machine. That is the equivalent of the grain of sand business referred above."

This triggers some memories of the design of scientific experiments. I used to do them in the field (ha, pun not intended, actually a lot of it is done in glasshouses) of plant protection. Let us say, because I frequently did, I need to test this latest product and see if its any good, compared to the products currently on the market. I should say at this point that when manufacturers of pesticides put a new product on the market it will be for certain stated purposes and they will have done their own tests to ensure it is effective for those purposes. However, I was working on what in global terms was a relatively minor problem and the big boys wouldnt have thought it worth the expense of tests on something where they couldnt see much of a market. None the less, the growers who were paying my salary found it a major problem and I had to test everything I could lay my hands on to try and find something effective. This meant doing a lot of fungicide testing experiments, which I found rather dull. First, identify a site near infected plants, so that the chances of infection of your experimental plants are good (this particular pathogen couldnt be cultured in the lab, so one had to rely on natural sources of infection). And apologies to fellow professionals, who will find this rather a Noddy account, but it may be news to most non-scientists.

Now the experiment needs to have a control (no treatment), perhaps a blank control (you spray, but only the water diluent, in case the water has an effect), an existing product or two or three that are already in use, and the new product. That is to say, six treatments. Now you cant just plant six plants and treat them, because you have no measure of the variability of their response: plants, being living, and therefore variable, vary, and how can you be sure that the variation in your results is due to the efficacy of the treatment, or the inherent variability of the test plants?

So, you need sufficient test plants in every treatment to give a reliable average response. How many is sufficient? Experience will tell you (after many failures), but it will be several. It must be the minimum necessary, because all this costs money and takes up lots of space.

We now have sufficient test plants to give us an average result, but we still only have one result for each treatment. Er suppose there are site factors, like your test plants are in a bad bit of soil, or light, or whatever, and therefore subject to different conditions to your control plants? No we must REPLICATE, and repeat round and about, so that we have several sets of results to compare. And in order to be sure that we havent replicated, by accident, all the controls in the top left where it is dry and all the treatments in the bottom right where it is wet, we must RANDOMISE.

At this point, what started out as an apparently simple question has turned into a major and expensive exercise.

But assuming you can get the resources to forge ahead, you now bear a heavy responsibility. You are going to commit large amounts of someone else's money to generate some numbers. What are you going to do with them? Well, first draw some conclusions, which is what your sponsors want, and then get them published in a reputable scientific journal because that will advance your career which is what you want.

Al this point you need advice from a statistician. And with luck, they will tell you that you need x plants per treatment and y replicates. And in due course, you do the experiment and send them the data and with a bit more luck they tell you that the results show that with a probability of z your results are significant, and therefore the stuff works. Without a bit of luck the results are not significant, the stuff doesnt work and both have to give the salesman the bad news and console yourself with the knowledge that negative results, though very hard to publish, are none the less VALID. Its just that you cant publish them ...

The probability of z is vital. In my branch of biology we accept, rather arbitrarily but based on long practical experience, that if the results are 95% likely to be significant, they get one star and can be published stating that is acceptable to conclude the effect is real, rather than just due to chance. If they are 99% significant they are much more likely to be real, they get two stars and we are much happier. 99.99% is fantastic, that's as good as certain, but very rarely seen. I and most of my colleagues would break out the champagne for a 95%, one star, result.

Of course, its different for physicists, they deal with more precise measurements, and I suppose they can achieve probabilities of 99.999 ... etc.

But to return to the opening statement, I'm confused. Where is the doubt that the probability of 2+2 equalling 4 is not 1 (ie certainty), but 0.99999 umpteenth 9, ie so certain even a Wee Free would risk a bet, but not certainty? How, and where, could 2+2 not equal 4?

I suppose this takes us to the grains of sand. I prefer the argument that rests on the example of Brownian motion. You can mount some pollen grains in water on a microscope slide and peer at them, as Brown did a couple of hundred years ago. They jiggle as they are hit by invisible forces, the molecules of the water that are in constant motion, but though the forces are not quite equal, so the grains jiggle about in a random motion, they are nearly equal, because the grains are vastly larger than the water molecules and the number of impacts from all directions is very large. So a grain does not suddenly shoot off right or left like a bullet. It might, because it is possible that at one moment all the impacts were on one side and none on the other, but such an occurrence is vanishingly unlikely and never observed. However, lets go down a few orders of magnitude. As things get smaller, they get less certain: you can be sure where the pollen grains will sit, but you cant be sure about sub-atomic particles. Nothing is certain, the forces are vastly more powerful than the items to which they are applied. Down there among the muons, gluons, screwons and whatever, nothing is certain, Heisenberg reigns (but not with certainty, as a matter of principle). As far as I can decipher, his Uncertainty Principle states that the act of observing alters the state of the particle, because the observation method interacts with the item under observation. Thus, the more accurately we know where a particle is, the less accurately we know where it is going, and the more accurately we know where it is going, the less accurately we know where it is.

That's quite enough for now, someone who knows more about this than me, which must be almost anyone, should now take over.

[Gordon]

Hmmm ... there is so much misunderstanding in Gordon's post that it's difficult to know where to start.

Oh Good! You are going to put me right then. .

Planck was looking at black body radiation. In order to get an equation that described the observed frequency spectrum, he made the assumption that energy could only be exchanged in amounts proportional to the frequency.

Yes. That’s what I said too.

This does not imply the existence of photons - something he opposed all his life. He certainly did not say that material objects are made of lumpy bits of energy. Mass/energy equivalence had to wait for Einstein't theory of relativity.

Mea culpa. Planck did not say what I said he said. Too much haste to be brief. He certainly had to accept though that the lumpiness of energy was part of his theory. Which bit of that did I get wrong?

Time is not quantised. In all theories that work, it is continuous. If it were not continuous, you would not be able to differentiate with respect to it, and you would be unable to do any useful calculations.

That’s a bit obtuse! Certainly not a good enough reason to say why you don’t think time can be quantised. I didn’t mean to assert that it is, I just asked a question. I don’t see what calculus has to do with it. We know there is quantisation in the world and calculus hasn’t stopped working. You are sure it isn’t, I don’t know [my #81 tried to see how it might be] and I don’t see how you can be so sure.

Maths is fine as long as it has a sound model under it. Perfect maths + bad model = failure. If Newton had used an inverse cubic law no amount of maths would get the right answers. He’d just get perfectly computed wrong ones. We have not progressed our knowledge of the world on the strength of maths but on finding the right models to apply it to.

Look inside any digital computer and you will find time is quantised. It's called a clock but it goes in jerks. Depite that we're very happy with the computer's answers. However, this isn't the quantisation we're looking for Luke.

The continuous spectrum is a bit odd. When you observe a continuous spectrum (e.g. black body radiation) for a given period of time, what you have observed is a finite (but very large!) number of photons, each with a specific energy. Planck's equation for black body radiation only tells us what proportion of the photons will be in a given energy range. It's a differential equation showing the derivative of the proportion with respect to the width of the range as the range tends to zero. When we plot a theoretical energy distribution as a continuous graph, we are plotting how that derivative varies as a function of energy. When we plot an observed spectrum as a line, we are merely joining up the closely-spaced dots. The spacing is determined by how much resolution our instrument has.

I don’t think we disagree on any of this. The shape of the BBR footprint is what it because of the physics involved. That shape puzzled everyone until Planck came up with a formula that seemed to fit the curve. Why that formula? He didn’t know, it worked but only after he changed his model reluctantly to quantise his packets using E=hf. He didn’t like it.

Now the Plank mass/length/time etc. These have absolutely no physical significance. They are units in just the same sense that the year, second, yard, metre, kilogram, ounce etc etc etc are units. Obviously, we can pick any units we want - the inch and the metre are completely arbitrary. The constants of nature will take different values in different units - e.g. the speed of light is 300,000,000 metres per second or 186,000 miles per second or 1 light-year per year or some silly number of furlongs per fortnight. What are these Planck units then? They are the units that result in the constants of nature that keep cluttering up our equations having the numerical value of 1.

Yes they are units but they seem to be among the most fundamental that we know. In that case they have a special significance don’t they? If not why not? The numerical value of any of these fundamental constants isn’t important. What is important is the role of that constant in describing nature. As long as these constants are combined variously in our computations based on reliable models using the same system of units we won’t go far wrong. Until we hit another anomaly. Again, it isn’t the maths it’s the underlying science.

We cannot directly observe any of these “Planck” entities, they are too small, except for the Planck mass which is accessible to us insofar that it has a value we can relate to. So in the sense that they are intangible you are right that these entities have no physical significance. However we have been led to them by our theories at least as ideas because they are the implications of those theories that work well macroscopically and even down to very small dimensions. These Planck terms are not observable but tell us something about the ultimate resolution of the physical laws that we know so in that sense they do have a significance.

Reputable scientists use these terms in their published books so if they are meaningless why do that?

The Planck mass certainly isn't the smallest mass there can be - obviously not, as it's the size of a grain of dust, and we know atoms are a lot less massive than that.

Isn’t that the point? The Planck mass turns out to be bigger than one might expect considering it appears to be related to a space that is so small? Isn’t that a puzzle? Isn’t it a puzzle that some of the universal constants are so very small and some are so very large when expressed in the same units? I am puzzled by scale. Puzzle = don’t understand. Back to where we came in.

[Vile Consort]

A great post, of which I've only quoted a small part above.

But please, let's not try to blind people with science. Let's keep it simple: more than 100 years ago a bunch of scientists, who had been raised on the laws of Newton et al, suddenly realised that these laws were no longer valid; they didn't work anymore as humankind started to discover the atom.

Quantum physics didn't fit into human consciousness, except when it came to weapons of mass destruction, and so quantum physics was almost totally ignored.

It remains so to this day.

You don't need to be an 'egghead' to have an opinion about any of this. I repeat that this quantum stuff is all still theoretical, including Higgs Boson (which actually hasn't been discovered at CERN, despite all the hype).

I'm not trying to blind anybody with science, but I do feel you are trying to blind us with a lot of pseudo-science.

No self-respecting scientist thinks that Newton's laws are not valid. They are valid enough to be able to send a spaceship to any planet you care to mention. There are extreme conditions under which they are no longer accurate, but in most circumstances we have to deal with they are valid and accurate.

You are correct about not needing to be an egghead to have an opinion. But opinions without sufficient understanding of the facts haven't much value in any field.

Don't forget that quantum mechanics is based entirely on what can be observed. Bohr in particular was ruthless about this. It isn't something that has been plucked out of the air.

[Quarky]

An interesting post umslopogaas. Agreed on the uncertainty principle, that is how I understand it. But, with all respect to a great scientist,and speaking from memory, it was a cop-out - sorry folks we can't get more accurate than that. Einstein in particular never loved it, and felt there must be an underying determinacy, even though we were unable to detect it.
I'm just wondering in view of recent experiments I referenced above, where the spin state of a single electron has been measured without disturbing the state, whether the sphere of application of the uncertainty principle is much diminished, and whether we are getting back to Einstein's viewpoint.
Regretfully I cannot afford to take time out to clarify my thoughts, and perhaps someone can put me right.

[Budapest]

I'm not trying to blind anybody with science, but I do feel you are trying to blind us with a lot of pseudo-science.

No self-respecting scientist thinks that Newton's laws are not valid. They are valid enough to be able to send a spaceship to any planet you care to mention. There are extreme conditions under which they are no longer accurate, but in most circumstances we have to deal with they are valid and accurate.

Vile Consort, I'm not trying to blind anyone with pseudo-science. I attempt to put this stuff in terms that people might understand.

The fact is that us humans understand next to nothing about the universe we find ourselves in. Gawd, we can't even predict the weather on this little planet of ours!

A vast number of humans still deeply believe that the world was created by a God (what's going on in America at the moment, for example, is quite terrifying).

Are we talking about ignorant savages, or what? Quantum theory has shown that the laws of nature created by Newton, et al, don't really work.

When you say that Newton's laws "are valid enough to be able to send a spaceship to any planet you care to mention" I should point out that the human race haven't been anywhere yet, except our little satellite called the moon. Over the decades there's been a total failure to get any kind of probe on Mars that was even remotely (ha!) successful. Deep space probes like Voyager are now starting to leave the solar system, more by accident than design (ask NASA).

Human science as it is today is more about hubris than any kind of solid understanding.

And don't forget the deities that humans worship. They'll get them spaceships there, won't they.

e=mc² might give us a better chance; that is, if the completely insane humans weren't so intent on building big bombs instead.

Savages.

[Vile Consort]

Vile Consort, I'm not trying to blind anyone with pseudo-science. I attempt to put this stuff in terms that people might understand.

You are doomed to failure there mate because you obviously understand very little of it yourself.

The fact is that us humans understand next to nothing about the universe we find ourselves in. Gawd, we can't even predict the weather on this little planet of ours!

You see, when you say "we can't even do X" it's important that X is something simple. Otherwise your statement is meaningless.

A vast number of humans still deeply believe that the world was created by a God (what's going on in America at the moment, for example, is quite terrifying).

Are we talking about ignorant savages, or what? Quantum theory has shown that the laws of nature created by Newton, et al, don't really work.

It has shown that they are only approximate. That's an entirely different thing. Quantum theory itself is probably only approximate. Did you know you can derive Newton's laws from Quantum theory?

When you say that Newton's laws "are valid enough to be able to send a spaceship to any planet you care to mention" I should point out that the human race haven't been anywhere yet, except our little satellite called the moon.

Are you saying Newton's laws only apply to manned spacecraft?

Over the decades there's been a total failure to get any kind of probe on Mars that was even remotely (ha!) successful.

Really? I just don't know how to argue against somebody that insists black is white. You will be telling me next the moon landings were filmed in Hollywood and the earth is flat. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_landing. You can even see some of the photographs they took.

Deep space probes like Voyager are now starting to leave the solar system, more by accident than design (ask NASA).

Hands up those who remember NASA announcing before the Voyagers were launched that their ultimate fate was to leave the solar system and us all going "like ... wow man!"

Human science as it is today is more about hubris than any kind of solid understanding.

And don't forget the deities that humans worship. They'll get them spaceships there, won't they.

e=mc² might give us a better chance; that is, if the completely insane humans weren't so intent on building big bombs instead.

Savages.

[Budapest]

Vile Consort, there's never been a successful probe landing on Mars, a planet which has the most earth-like conditions in the solar system.

I won't at the moment address your other points, except to say that all science is based on a language called mathematics, which by its nature has to resolve (ie, sums have to add-up successfully). At the risk of going into 'pseudo-science' the thing about quantum physics is that the sums do not add-up, or at least they don't in the Newtonian universe.

But - and here's the 'but' - sums don't add-up in the Newtonian world, either.

What's the square root of 2?

Don't bother trying to work out the square root of 2, because it's unworkable. It doesn't resolve and as such is called an 'irrational number'.

Once again, at the risk of being accused of 'pseudo-science' or 'dumbing down', the basic fact is that all modern science is based on mathematics, and that mathematics is fundamentally flawed (it doesn't resolve successfully).

1 + 1 = 2

That's how our world is structured, but it's not how our present mathematics is structured.

Perhaps a good way at looking at quantum theory is trying to get back to 1 + 1 = 2

So go on shoot me, for trying to explain this in an understandable way.

[Ferretfancy]

Budapest

I was in the Exploratorium in San Francisco on 4th July 1997 watching the Mars explorer coming down onto the Martian surface in a live transmission from NASA. That vehicle was still sending back information until quite recently, and there are currently two other probes on the Martian surface with another due to land soon.

I suppose it's a waste of my time telling you, so goodnight.

[Vile Consort]

Agreed. The man is a buffoon.

[Budapest]

Budapest

I was in the Exploratorium in San Francisco on 4th July 1997 watching the Mars explorer coming down onto the Martian surface in a live transmission from NASA. That vehicle was still sending back information until quite recently, and there are currently two other probes on the Martian surface with another due to land soon.

I suppose it's a waste of my time telling you, so goodnight.

Never a waste of time, and thank you for the info. Here's part of the Wiki stuff about Mars exploration. Make up your own mind...

Due to the complexity involved in engineering an interplanetary journey, the exploration of Mars has experienced a high failure rate, especially in early attempts, with roughly two-thirds of all spacecraft destined for Mars failing before completing their missions, with some failing even before observations could begin. However, missions have also met with unexpected levels of success, such as the twin Mars Exploration Rovers operating for years beyond their original mission specifications.


Wikipedia - Exploration of Mars

"Due to the complexity involved in engineering an interplanetary journey..." There are many reasons why so many Mars probes have failed, and arguably one reason is because our mathematics is so flawed.

Mathematicians find all sorts of clever ways to get around Pi, and the square root of 2, and infinity, etc, etc, but none of it really explains the physical universe we find ourselves in. Thus when we go beyond our little blue planet we get into all sorts of difficulties.

[Budapest]

Agreed. The man is a buffoon.

Would you care to tell me what the square root of 2 is?

Or will a deity you worship tell you that?

This is the 21st century, not the 12th century. Who's the buffoon?

[Bryn]

Would you care to tell me what the square root of 2 is?

Or will a deity you worship tell you that?

This is the 21st century, not the 12th century. Who's the buffoon?

It's the real irrational number which, when multiplied by itself, gives a result of 2. The fact that it cannot be expressed as a ratio of two integers makes it no less real.