# Stephen Hawking will lose 100 dollars?



## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16111562

Three years ago, when the LHC was starting to run, Stephen Hawking said that it will be nice if the Higgs boson is *not* found. Even more: he bet 100 US dollars for that option. Of course, the old Higgs declared the war to Hawking... but that's another history :lol:


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

"If on Tuesday both experiments find a big spike, each of them in exactly the same place and in the place that they expected to find the Higgs, the temptation for even the most dispassionate physicist to jump for joy will be irresistible"

I'm not a physicist, but I would be prepared to bet on its existence myself, so that's the kind of news I'm hoping we'll hear tomorrow.


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

Good ol' Steve and his bets. If he, indeed, turns out to be wrong, I will write a 5-voice double fugue in celebration for the Higgs boson's triumph. Accompanying the fugue, for no logically discernible reason, will be a group of African tribes singing: "Omega lambda, omega lambda, omega lambda!"

I am not sure why.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Dodecaplex said:


> Good ol' Steve and his bets. If he, indeed, turns out to be wrong, I will write a 5-voice double fugue in celebration for the Higgs boson's triumph. Accompanying the fugue, for no logically discernable reason, will be a group of African tribes singing: "Omega lambda, omega lambda, omega lambda!"
> 
> I am not sure why.


well, then you can start preparing the theme of your 5-voice fugue (or should I say, the themes, because you plan a double fugue actually :lol: it seems that the Higgs is a fact , a big fan of Stephen is talking here :lol:. I plan to write 12 etudes for Bongo, one for each ke ...oh, wait, dammit.


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

aleazk said:


> well, then you can start preparing the theme of your 5-voice fugue (or should I say, the themes, because you plan a double fugue actually :lol: it seems that the Higgs is a fact , a big fan of Stephen is talking here :lol:. I plan to write 12 etudes for Bongo, one for each ke ...oh, wait, dammit.


Whoa! I just had an amazing idea! But I'm not sharing it here, lest anyone steal it from me. But it's amazing, I assure you.  Oh, and a big fan of Susskind is talking _here_.

Good luck with your revolutionary études for bongo. You'd make Feynman proud (or jealous; one or the other :lol.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Well, if true, I'll love seeing the discovery of the Higgs. I was part of an experiment at Fermilab that searched for the Higgs many years ago. We didn't have much expectation of finding it, but of course, we looked. Hawking has been right enough that he can afford to be wrong now and then.


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## SuperTonic (Jun 3, 2010)

I read an article about this today in the main stream media, but it left me confused. From the article it sounded like all they've done is narrow down the search to a small part of the "spectrum". All that says to me is that they are almost out of places to look. To me that doesn't sound like a good thing (in terms of finding the Higgs I mean, if you are hoping it isn't found then I guess its a good thing). Did I miss something?
I'm just a layman with a strong interest in the sciences, and I've been following the search for the Higgs ever since the LHC started operations.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

SuperTonic said:


> I read an article about this today in the main stream media, but it left me confused. From the article it sounded like all they've done is narrow down the search to a small part of the "spectrum". All that says to me is that they are almost out of places to look. To me that doesn't sound like a good thing (in terms of finding the Higgs I mean, if you are hoping it isn't found then I guess its a good thing). Did I miss something?
> I'm just a layman with a strong interest in the sciences, and I've been following the search for the Higgs ever since the LHC started operations.


the problem is that is not that easy as "turn on the detector and eureka, i found it". you need tons of data. once you have the data, you run a careful statistical analysis of that data.i think @mmsbls will give you a more accurate answer, given that he is precisely an experimental particle physicist!


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

mmsbls said:


> Well, if true, I'll love seeing the discovery of the Higgs. I was part of an experiment at Fermilab that searched for the Higgs many years ago. We didn't have much expectation of finding it, but of course, we looked. Hawking has been right enough that he can afford to be wrong now and then.


wow, you are one of the few particle physicists that i know who recognizes Hawking's achievements.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

I read another article about this too, and I was confused at this idea of the Higgs Boson being 124-126 billion volts in weight, and yet a proton being 1 billion volts in weight. Does that go to say that the Higgs particle isn't really subatomic, since it's bigger than a proton?


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I read another article about this too, and I was confused at this idea of the Higgs Boson being 124-126 billion volts in weight, and yet a proton being 1 billion volts in weight. Does that go to say that the Higgs particle isn't really subatomic, since it's bigger than a proton?


The concept of electron volts (eV) or billion electron volts (GeV) is a bit complicated. Technically eV is a unit of energy not mass. Particle physicists use eV and GeV to refer to the mass of particles because they measure energy rather than mass. The reason the two can be used somewhat equivalently is that from Einstein's special relativity energy and mass are closely related as Energy = mass * (speed of light) * (speed of light) (E = mc2 or m times c squared).

The mass (or energy) of a particle does not give an indication of size. We don't really understand what particles really are. Our present theory says they are point particles (meaning they have no dimensions and no volume). That's a bit odd, and no one really believes that. Newer theories, such as string theory, suggest that particles are strings or loops. Mathematically that turns out to be much better, but to the average person it's still a bit weird.

The bottom line is that _all_ particles, no matter what their mass, are extremely small and considered subatomic. The mass particles do have is believed to come from the interaction of that particle with the Higgs particle (technically the Higgs field, but that's getting too complicated). If the Higgs does not exist, we have to look elsewhere for what gives mass to everything.

I know that's a bit complicated, but hopefully it helps.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

aleazk said:


> wow, you are one of the few particle physicists that i know who recognizes Hawking's achievements.


I wouldn't say that's my experience. It's true that we experimentalists are pretty firmly grounded in empirical data verifying theory. String theory, for example, may be great, but until we test it and confirm predictions, we're agnostic.

I personally feel that Hawking's work, although difficult to test, is still an extension of fairly well understood theory. String theory may or may not be true, but there's no question about general relativity. I guess some may feel that it's all speculative, and therefore, not in the same category as other theoretical work such as Electroweak theory (hence no Noble Prize). I believe Hawking is a major force in pushing a well understood theory and clearly deserves strong recognition for that.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

mmsbls said:


> I wouldn't say that's my experience. It's true that we experimentalists are pretty firmly grounded in empirical data verifying theory. String theory, for example, may be great, but until we test it and confirm predictions, we're agnostic.
> 
> I personally feel that Hawking's work, although difficult to test, is still an extension of fairly well understood theory. String theory may or may not be true, but there's no question about general relativity. I guess some may feel that it's all speculative, and therefore, not in the same category as other theoretical work such as Electroweak theory (hence no Noble Prize). I believe Hawking is a major force in pushing a well understood theory and clearly deserves strong recognition for that.


believe it or not, I know many quantum field theorists who hate Hawking. But when i push them, i realize that they don't even know what a singularity theorem is!, or the pioneer work of Hawking on free quantum fields in a curved spacetime background!. of course, I'm a general relativist, so my reactions to this are a little bit exaggerated. anyway, I'm glad to hear your words. regards.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

SuperTonic said:


> I read an article about this today in the main stream media, but it left me confused. From the article it sounded like all they've done is narrow down the search to a small part of the "spectrum". All that says to me is that they are almost out of places to look. To me that doesn't sound like a good thing (in terms of finding the Higgs I mean, if you are hoping it isn't found then I guess its a good thing). Did I miss something?


I left the field of particle physics about 18 years ago so I'm a bit rusty on details, but the general concepts have not changed. As you might expect the details of searching for particles are complicated, but the basic ideas are somewhat straightforward.

Once created by an accelerator, new particles will quickly "decay" to other well known particles. The decay is similar to what happens to a uranium nucleus when it undergoes fission. "Daughter" particles are created in the process. In fission these daughter particles carry the energy that is used in reactors (or to blow up cities).

The trick to finding new particles is detecting the daughter particles and reconstructing what the original particle was. From theory, we can predict what the expected decay particles will be (known as the "signature"). One huge problem is that many well known particles are created in colliders events (a single decay), and some of them will sometimes decay in ways that mimic the "signature" of the new particle. These events are known as background and must be estimated and removed to find the "signal" for the new particle. When the actual signal is small (few events), separating it from the background at a statistically significant level is very difficult.

The LHC experiments were able to determine that _if the Higgs mass were in a certain range_, the signal events would stand out from the background and the experiments would have a statistically significant signal. Since they do not find such a signal, the experiments can exclude those Higgs masses at a 95% confidence level (technical statistics concept).

The experiments also found the hint of a true signal. There are excess events above the background that would indicate a Higgs mass around 125 GeV or so. The problem is that the statistical significance is too small. They need more data to increase the signal to noise (background). They expect to get that additional data during the next run that starts in March. After that run, they should be able to declare a Higgs signal around 125 GeV or say it is excluded at 95% confidence level at a range of masses up to 400 Gev or somewhat higher.

Note that excluding particles in certain ranges can be enormously useful to physics. Many theories had to be scraped or modified due to particle searches that did not find the particles. To particle physicists (and theorists), these events are all immensely exciting!


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Well, today 2 experiments at CERN gave talks indicating they have found a particle consistent with the Standard Model Higgs. The excess in signal events over background gives a 5 sigma confidence level (1 part in roughly 3 million of being wrong from a statistical standpoint).

Relatively simple discussions of the results can be seen on the CMS detector and Atlas detector pages.

Now the experiments have to gather more data to understand if the properties of the particle that look like the Higgs actually closely match our theories. There's still a lot of work to be done.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

_Stephen Hawking on Higgs: 'Discovery has cost me $100'_



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18708626


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## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

Did you see Peter Higgs' reaction in the audience? It was very emotional.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

This whole thing is just so exciting!


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

aleazk said:


> _Stephen Hawking on Higgs: 'Discovery has cost me $100'_
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18708626


Hawking mentioned some disappointment because he was hoping for new physics rather than verification of present theories. I think we all love truly new discoveries such as dark matter and dark energy because they open up new possibilities that are always profoundly exciting, but I've always found great satisfaction when hard experimental work verifies an existing theory. I worked on the search for the top quark, and that was a very, long hard challenge that resulted in nailing down an important part of the Standard Model. I can imagine how thrilled the many members of both the Atlas and CMS collaborations are.


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## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

Priceless smile at the end:

Stephen Hawking on Higgs Discovery has lost me $100


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Before the champagne is popped, have we checked the fibre optic cable connections?


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Philip said:


> Priceless smile at the end:


I was going to comment that!


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

Some questions--now that the Fermilab Tevatron has, as I understand it, been shut down due to lack of funding, is there any other particle accelerator powerful enough to provide an independent confirmation of the LHC results? Would the Tevatron be able to do it, if it was still running? Could it be brought back into service, if the money was there?


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Fsharpmajor said:


> Some questions--now that the Fermilab Tevatron has, as I understand it, been shut down due to lack of funding, is there any other particle accelerator powerful enough to provide an independent confirmation of the LHC results? Would the Tevatron be able to do it, if it was still running? Could it be brought back into service, if the money was there?


The latest Tevatron Higgs search shows an excess of events in the mass range 115 - 135 GeV (the LHC result is roughly 126 GeV) with almost a 3 sigma significance. With additional running the Tevatron presumably could bring the signal up to the 5 sigma standard. If the LHC were not running, the Tevatron would clearly continue in hopes of reaching this statistically significant result. There really is no reason to continue; however, since the LHC can perform more significant physics searches due to its higher collision energy.

I think almost all particle physicists feel that the Higgs (or at least a new particle with properties similar to the Higgs) has been independently verified. Both the CMS and Atlas experiments at the LHC found evidence for the Higss. Both experiments utilize the LHC, but they are completely independent in the design of the detectors, data collection, and analysis of data. For all practical purposes the experiments could have been on separate continents.

There is an additional way in which analysis from large particle physics experiments lead to high confidence results. The Higgs particle decays in several different ways (signatures), and each signature can manifest itself in different parts of the detector. For example the Higgs can decay into 4 electrons or 4 muons (essentially heavy electrons). Electrons are "found" in the electromagnetic detector component and typically analyzed by physicists specializing in electron events. Muon decays are "found" in the muon detector and analyzed by physicists specializing in muon events. There is overlap, but generally separate groups of physicists design, build, and calibrate muon or electron detectors, and these separate groups develop code to search for electrons or muons. In some general sense electron and muon searches are partially independent of each other. Further the number of Higgs -> 4 electrons and Higgs -> 4 muons should be essentially the same. The statistical significance of the independent searches through the electron or muon channels are not yet at 5 sigma, but eventually they will be. There are other decay signatures as well, and these will continue to be explored.


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