God Particle Detected at CERN

Tomk1 · 13-12-2011 08:20PM

foxyboxer wrote: »

Sure what good is Relativity or Blackholes or Neutron stars? I'm not going into interstellar space in my lifetime am I? We are sentient beings who want to understand these things. Like a child who takes apart a toy to find out how it works.

Does a cow care what the grass is made of? Of course not, it just knows it needs it and it tastes good :-)

But you are travelling through 'interstellar space' on this little pale-blue-pebble, just take a break from watching the x-factor somenight, and have a look up into our Universe, but a lass; there are more things in the whole 'verse, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Hey, don't compare yourself to a cow, cows have feelings tooooo.
---
If only our bankers invested some money in the LHC, at least we would have something to show for it.

DB21 · 13-12-2011 09:43PM

The problem I have is that the "science is a waste of money" philosophy has really seeped into human culture. We spend/t more money on ring tones for mobiles than on researching how the universe works. If we don't know how things work, we can't make them work for us.

I mean, even look at the neutrino situation. If they prove to be cutting through dimensions, maybe there's a way we can use that to reach other habitable planets faster. It's the small steps that make the big difference.

Loanshark Blues · 13-12-2011 10:17PM

The bar man says "for you, no charge."

A neutrino asks "how much is a pint?"

goose2005 · 13-12-2011 10:28PM

DB21 wrote: »

If they prove to be cutting through dimensions, maybe there's a way we can use that to reach other habitable planets faster. It's the small steps that make the big difference.

That's what Black Mesa thought...

Mickeroo · 13-12-2011 10:37PM

KeithAFC wrote: »

Fair enough. I do just wish more did go into poverty and world hunger etc. I understand Science is important for everything. Perhaps it is just me who isn't too bothered how the Universe came about.

FYP

Kevin Duffy · 13-12-2011 11:18PM

opinion guy wrote: »

I was f**king waiting for someone to come up with this apple under the tree crap. You do know this story is a complete fabrication ? A piece of revisionist history to make Newton appear as a logical man.

I don't care about the accuracy of the story, it was an illustration and you understood the point.

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Nope. Just some questions.

That, Chuck, is at best disingenuous, but really it's bollocks. You're not just posing questions, you're arguing against the project.

DB21 · 14-12-2011 01:03AM

goose2005 wrote: »

That's what Black Mesa thought...

Fair point :P

Conor108 · 14-12-2011 01:08AM

opinion guy wrote: »

17 year old in her bedroom hitting the headlines:
http://jezebel.com/5867060/awesome-17+year+old-girl-invents-nanoparticle-that-kills-cancer-cells

Ohhhh?

*Opens Link*

Oh.

Heres a pretty clear and informative picture of how the LHC works

opinion guy · 14-12-2011 01:11AM

Kevin Duffy wrote: »

I don't care about the accuracy of the story, it was an illustration and you understood the point.

I care about the accuracy of the story. That particular story is a pet hate of mine.

Chuck Stone · 14-12-2011 01:20AM

Kevin Duffy wrote: »

That, Chuck, is at best disingenuous, but really it's bollocks. You're not just posing questions, you're arguing against the project.

I have strong reservations about spending so much money on something that may have no real world return for the average person.

What's wrong with that? Why do have such an issue with my concerns? Am I not allowed to have these concerns?

Do you think maybe you might need a bit of a hug or something?

skelliser · 14-12-2011 01:45AM

Chuck Stone wrote: »

I have strong reservations about spending so much money on something that may have no real world return for the average person.

What's wrong with that? Why do have such an issue with my concerns? Am I not allowed to have these concerns?

thankfully your opinion doesnt count.

what are you concerned about?

Also CERN has returned much much more then what was put in.
Such things as the www, CT scanners, medical imaging, radiation therapy, industrial imaging all of which have helped us to fight and treat diseases such as cancer.

As iv said before ignorance is bless but please try and expand your world and read up on scientific research and its benefits before you mouth off.

skelliser · 14-12-2011 01:50AM

next time ye guys, god particle forbid; are involved in an accident or have cancer, you can thank CERN for the CT scanner that will scan your body.

or else you could just refuse to use it as you think there is better things to spend the money on.

opinion guy · 14-12-2011 01:59AM

Jesus Christ this CT thing again. Read the feckin thread would ye

some website I found after using google wrote:

CT was invented in 1972 by British engineer Godfrey Hounsfield of EMI Laboratories, England and by South Africa-born physicist Allan Cormack of Tufts University, Massachusetts.

Not only is your point WRONG, its also a strawman - nobody is saying we shouldn't be doing particle physics. Chuck and I are just questioning the expense of THIS FREAKING EXPERIMENT when weighed against the HIGHLY UNLIKELY odds of a practical benefit within our lifetimes when we could be spending the same money curing cancer

44leto · 14-12-2011 02:13AM

opinion guy wrote: »

Jesus Christ this CT thing again. Read the feckin thread would ye

Not only is your point WRONG, its also a strawman - nobody is saying we shouldn't be doing particle physics. Chuck and I are just questioning the expense of THIS FREAKING EXPERIMENT when weighed against the HIGHLY UNLIKELY odds of a practical benefit within our lifetimes when we could be spending the same money curing cancer

How do you know??

Nixon in 1971 announced a war on cancer, and appropriated an extra 100 million into research, with extra funding when required. Back then that was a serious chunk of change. But to spite the billions going into cancer research since then, it is only in the last 5 years very real progress has being made. That is 40 years of concentrated research.

We are still no way near a blanket quick and painless cure for "most" cancers and there is still no cure for advanced cancer.

So do you think Nixon was right to allocate that extra funding in finding a cancer cure in 1971??

Chuck Stone · 14-12-2011 02:22AM

skelliser wrote: »

thankfully your opinion doesnt count.

Why are people so rude on this thread when the 'party line' isn't toed?

what are you concerned about?

If you haven't gotten it by now I don't think I have the talent needed to help you get it.

Also CERN has returned much much more then what was put in.
Such things as the www,

Tim Berners Lee developed the WWW while he worked as a contractor for CERN - it wasn't CERN driven research. If anything CERN is just a footnote.

As iv said before ignorance is bless

It is? How's that working out for you?

but please try and expand your world and read up on scientific research and its benefits

I'm all for science and discovery. I do however question the motivations and costs for some scientific endeavour.

before you mouth off.

The only people mouthing off in this thread are the people trying to silence the voices who are asking questions about the cost benefit of this type of research.

opinion guy · 14-12-2011 02:48AM

44leto wrote: »

How do you know??

Nixon in 1971 announced a war on cancer, and appropriated an extra 100 million into research, with extra funding when required. Back then that was a serious chunk of change. But to spite the billions going into cancer research since then, it is only in the last 5 years very real progress has being made. That is 40 years of concentrated research.

We are still no way near a blanket quick and painless cure for "most" cancers and there is still no cure for advanced cancer.

So do you think Nixon was right to allocate that extra funding in finding a cancer cure in 1971??

I didn't know that Nixon did this actually, but of course he was right. Because cancer is a real world everyday problem that needs solving. The expense is justified. Us not knowing whether there is a Higgs boson or not doesn't impact on anyones day to day life. It certainly doesn't affect life expectancy. Its not a real world everyday problem.

TheUsual · 14-12-2011 03:23AM

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote: »

It wasn't looking good for a while there, but I think it means we're getting hoverboards.

Hoverboards ... at last.

mackg · 14-12-2011 03:45AM

Been reading the thread and even though good points being made by both sides I would still fall on the side of agreeing with the research, out of curiosity where does the funding for the project come from?

Firefox11 · 14-12-2011 03:59AM

TheUsual wrote: »

Hoverboards ... at last.

It's the being able to order a pint through your TV screen is the one im waiting for.:(

Mickeroo · 14-12-2011 04:20AM

opinion guy wrote: »

J

Not only is your point WRONG, its also a strawman - nobody is saying we shouldn't be doing particle physics. Chuck and I are just questioning the expense of THIS FREAKING EXPERIMENT when weighed against the HIGHLY UNLIKELY odds of a practical benefit within our lifetimes when we could be spending the same money curing cancer

its a long drawn out process though, it may not benefit us in our lifetime, but it might lay the ground work to benefit future generations, if that groundwork is not laid now future generations won't have the knowledge base to work with. The genome would never have been mapped if the ground work hadn't been laid down by previous generations of scientists.

The thing is with research like this, we really don't know where it could lead or how it could benefit us, its like I said earlier, some of the most important discoveries were made by accident as a by product of other research. Hypothetically speaking the cure for cancer could come about as a fluke from someone researching something with "no practical benefit" like the life cycles of deep sea corals, we just don't know. Its important to expand our knowledge in as wide a spectrum as possible. Knowledge is power.

amacachi · 14-12-2011 04:49AM

Chuck Stone wrote: »

I have strong reservations about spending so much money on something that may have no real world return for the average person.

What's wrong with that? Why do have such an issue with my concerns? Am I not allowed to have these concerns?

Do you think maybe you might need a bit of a hug or something?

If everyone thought like that then we probably still wouldn't have any ability to control electricity and that's no exaggeration. Distributing wealth equally holds everyone back in the long run. What the human race has achieved in the last few centuries is nothing short of amazing and would never happen if there wasn't a huge amount of "pointless" spending and endeavour while many others were "left behind".

My favorite line of a song ever is "I hear babies cry, I watch them grow, they'll learn much more than I'll ever know." I'd love to be around when something like a technological singularity comes about but I know I won't be.

Boundaries have to be pushed constantly rather than everyone turning inwards. One thing I'd wondered about is how China fell behind Europe so much over the last millennium or so. When the Portuguese etc. sent ships over in the middle ages the Chinese had ships 10 times the size of the Portuguese ships. China (obviously I'm leaving aside a fair amount of social, political and other matters within China) at that time however turned inwards for a number of reasons. Until then Europe was a ****hole compared to China but with competition (and its ugly consequences in some cases) among the European states, principalities etc. Europe took off at a ridiculous rate while China still hasn't quite caught up to this day. Even in later years while they remained isolated the consequences (Great Leap Forward) of that stagnation hit all over again.

Some day we'll be colonising other planets. I don't know how yet, I doubt anyone could do more than make several educated guesses, possibly all of which will be wrong. We'll never get there without ambition and pursuing it for the sake of it.

Podge_irl · 14-12-2011 05:00AM

opinion guy wrote: »

Chuck and I are just questioning the expense of THIS FREAKING EXPERIMENT when weighed against the HIGHLY UNLIKELY odds of a practical benefit within our lifetimes when we could be spending the same money curing cancer

I didn't realise they were mutually exclusive.

CERN, in the grand scheme of things, is not actually that expensive. It's rather pointless to base scientific study on what might turn out to be useful, as we have no earthly idea what will turn out to be useful. People were fairly convinced they understood physics about 100 years ago and then quantum theory and GR came along. QM especially was seen as interesting but useless at the time, but modern day electronics simply wouldn't work without it.

Also, it turns out anti-protons are quite effective at killing cancer cells. More so then radiation therapy I believe. So there's one for particle physics curing cancer.

sandmanporto · 14-12-2011 05:31AM

MisterEpicurus wrote: »

http://news.sky.com/home/technology/article/16129043

Scientists are set to confirm they have caught a glimpse of the elusive 'God particle' - the so far theoretical concept that helps to explain some of the mysteries of the Universe.

The Cern physics research centre in Switzerland is expected to reveal that experiments in the Large Hadron Collider have produced signals that provide the clearest evidence yet that the sub-atomic particle exists.
"I am feeling quite a level of excitement," said Oliver Buchmueller, one of the senior scientists seeking the particle.
The Higgs particle, or boson, is a key missing piece in the most widely accepted theory of physics - called the Standard Model - which describes how particles and forces interact.
For more than a year scientists at Cern have been firing particles in opposite directions around a 27km long ring-shaped tunnel 100m below ground.
When the particles have acclerated to almost the speed of light they are encouraged to collide. Sensitive detectors are then used to examine the debris for new particles.
There is still a possibility that the findings are down to chance disturbances, rather than a real observation. Further tests are planned.
"We are moving very close to a conclusion in the first few months of next year," said Dr Buchmueller.
The £6bn experiment is an attempt to replicate the conditions shortly after the Universe was created 13.7 billion years ago in the Big Bang.
The Standard Model of physics predicts that sub-atomic particles should have no mass.
But according to the theory proposed by some scientists, an invisible Higgs force field and an associated boson were created soon after the Big Bang.
These create a drag on other particles, giving them mass.
If the Cern experiments confirm the Higgs boson exists it would fix the biggest hole in the Standard Model - and give credence to what has been a largely mathematical model of how the Universe works.
But if they showed it does not exist it would shake the foundations of modern physics and force a massive rethink on the forces that glue the Universe together.

Sounds Good.

Sounds to me as if they are simply on a new hunch. Trust me civilization will be dead before they have concrete proof about what exactly builds our universe. Thats pretty ironic as i say we will be dead before they know but im sure the god particles wil inform us after we have killed us and our planet

im invisible · 14-12-2011 09:38AM

amacachi wrote: »

Boundaries have to be pushed constantly rather than everyone turning inwards. One thing I'd wondered about is how China fell behind Europe so much over the last millennium or so. When the Portuguese etc. sent ships over in the middle ages the Chinese had ships 10 times the size of the Portuguese ships. China (obviously I'm leaving aside a fair amount of social, political and other matters within China) at that time however turned inwards for a number of reasons. Until then Europe was a ****hole compared to China but with competition (and its ugly consequences in some cases) among the European states, principalities etc. Europe took off at a ridiculous rate while China still hasn't quite caught up to this day.

its because they drink tea... /QI

Cú Giobach · 14-12-2011 11:37AM

I hope the people posting here about using money to do nothing other than cure cancer and feed the world etc... are all working in these particular fields and not wasting their time working in factories making unnecessary items like toasters or in shops selling unimportant items like cameras or flowers, I also hope you are not giving large amounts of your money to Diageo or Heineken and are donating all disposable income to help feed the starving masses and medical research.

hooradiation · 14-12-2011 12:08PM

Cú Giobach wrote: »

I hope the people posting here about using money to do nothing other than cure cancer and feed the world etc... are all working in these particular fields and not wasting their time working in factories making unnecessary items like toasters or in shops selling unimportant items like cameras or flowers, I also hope you are not giving large amounts of your money to Diageo or Heineken and are donating all disposable income to help feed the starving masses and medical research.

It's not a real argument they're making, asking for consistency is something I wouldn't expect.

opinion guy · 14-12-2011 12:47PM

Podge_irl wrote: »

I didn't realise they were mutually exclusive.

CERN, in the grand scheme of things, is not actually that expensive. It's rather pointless to base scientific study on what might turn out to be useful, as we have no earthly idea what will turn out to be useful. People were fairly convinced they understood physics about 100 years ago and then quantum theory and GR came along. QM especially was seen as interesting but useless at the time, but modern day electronics simply wouldn't work without it.

Also, it turns out anti-protons are quite effective at killing cancer cells. More so then radiation therapy I believe. So there's one for particle physics curing cancer.

Actually you have a point on it not being that expensive. I say this only in comparison to the amount of money been thrown to the banking system. Hmmm put another way I used to think LHC was massively expensive and of questionable benefit. No I still wonder about the benefit but after seeing the money being handed over to the corrupt banks I no longer think its all that expensive.

Particle physics cures cancer - great. I didn't say "don't do particle physics" - no-one is saying that.

Hmm I coming to the conclusion that none of the people here realise how insanely esoteric and distant from everyday life the Higgs Boson, if it exists is. People keep throwing up other stuff from physics like electronics, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism etc. This experiment isn't anything like any of that. I can demonstrate the wave-particle duality of light and hence evidence of the quantum world with a lamp and a diffraction grating. Electronics and magnetism have been demonstrable using everyday crap lying about the place for at least 150 years. Even gravity, one of the weakest forces of nature was observable from everyday events. The nuclear world gave us clues of its existence thru the work of Pierre and Marie Curie 100 years ago again with fairly cheap equipment.

The LHC is a €7,000,000,000 experiment just to allow us to say whether particle theorised after 30 years of some very esoteric mathematics might exist or not. If you wanted to actually DO anything with it, it would probably need another 7trillion and a century or so invested. It is soooooooooooooooooooooo far from any applicability as to be pointless. This is 7billion just to prove a theory so that the boffins can refine it and make their math prettier. It isn't like any experiment ever done before.

Its clear from some of the posts here that people think this will mean space travel, or some new energy source, or hoverboards or Star Trek will come true or somehow or other to. It won't mean any of that.

foxyboxer · 14-12-2011 01:06PM

opinion guy wrote: »

The nuclear world gave us clues of its existence thru the work of Pierre and Marie Curie 100 years ago again with fairly cheap equipment.

I can't re-create the conditions immediately after the big bang in my bedroom* but I can do it with 7 billion spare cash. :pac:

You need a particle accelerator to determine what matter is made of, but you need the LHC to determinie why it is matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics#High_energy_physics.2FParticle_physics

* that would be a Large Hardon Collider <ba-dum-tish>

Chuck Stone · 14-12-2011 01:17PM

hooradiation wrote: »

It's not a real argument they're making, asking for consistency is something I wouldn't expect.

Because you in your infinite wisdom and incredible powers of reasoning and logic get to decide what is a real argument and what isn't.

Please allow me to carry your fruit oh wise one.

Liam Byrne · 14-12-2011 01:21PM

Firefox11 wrote: »

TheUsual wrote: »

Hoverboards ... at last.

It's the being able to order a pint through your TV screen is the one im waiting for.:(

Try the red button - Sky have probably got every money-making angle sussed.

God Particle Detected at CERN

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