

RIP Higgs Boson (with 95% confidence) - akkartik
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/08/23/a-higgs-setback-did-stephen-hawking-just-win-the-most-outrageous-bet-in-physics-history

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guygurari
I'm a particle physics grad student. My god, what utter nonsense. The only
reasonably accurate paragraph is this:

    
    
        "And, more importantly, the lower energy range from 114 to just under 145 billion electron volts, a region of energy that Fermilab has determined, through earlier experiments, may harbor the Higgs, has not been ruled out. But the Higgs is quickly running out of places to hide."
    

The region of higher Higgs mass is indeed ruled out (at 95% confidence), and
currently the bound is even stronger than stated -- the Higgs mass is expected
to be between 114-130 GeV if it exists.

The article's main flaw is its assumption that, because the remaining mass
window is "small", it decreases our chances of finding the Higgs. This is not
the case for several reasons. Most importantly, it has been known since the
planning stages of the accelerator that a Higgs with such a low mass is more
difficult to find, in the sense that it requires running the experiment for
longer, collecting more statistics, before we can decide whether or not it
exists. So it comes as no surprise that we first have conclusive results about
the higher mass range. It just happens that the Higgs, if it exists, doesn't
have a high mass, so we keep looking.

It is expected that in 1-2 years we will have enough statistics to either
discover or rule out the Higgs in the remaining mass window.

The second mistake the article makes is in claiming that not finding the Higgs
is somehow a bad thing. That it means the LHC was a waste of taxpayer money. I
would say quite the opposite. If the LHC finds the Higgs and nothing else,
then it will only confirm our existing model and we will learn nothing new
about the world (except for the value of the Higgs mass). This is the worst
possible outcome. On the other hand, not finding the Higgs would be an
extremely exciting result, since it would open the way to less well-explored
ideas about the origin of mass. The goal of the LHC is to teach us about the
world, not stroke physicists' egos and tell us how clever our existing
theories are.

~~~
maaku
I am reminded of an observation made by my former boss, a planetary scientist
at NASA, about that same statistical effect:

When a new Earth-crossing asteroid or comet is discovered, it's orbit is
rarely known with any great certainty. The cross sectional area of the Earth
divided by the area of space the object might possibly pass through yields the
chance of a collision. With each successive night of observation, the orbital
characteristics are determined to greater accuracy, and the cone of potential
trajectories is reduced. As a not-so-intuitive result, the reported
probability of a doomsday scenario grows geometrically higher with each
successive night of observation. In some cases it makes national or world-wide
news as the probability of mass extinction grows from 1 in a billion, to 1 in
a million, to one in 10,000... Obviously there's a trend there, right? Some
journalists think so, then mass hysteria ensues and NASA receives
correspondence from mothers asking if they should euthanize their children to
protect them from the horrific event (a true story, sadly).

Then at the height of mass hysteria, the next night's observation brings the
circle of uncertainty just small enough to exclude the passage of the Earth,
and instantly the probability of Armageddon drops to zero. Those media outlets
who hyped the doomsday scenario then accuse the scientists of fear mongering
(ironic), and the public forgets until the next big object is found looming
our way, and the cycle continues.

It's sad, but not unexpected that the general public lacks the mathematical
literacy to understand these statistical quirks. It's truly sad, and perhaps
even criminal that journalists, and especially science journalists fall victim
to those same misconceptions.

~~~
NY_Entrepreneur
"It's truly sad, and perhaps even criminal that journalists, and especially
science journalists fall victim to those same misconceptions."

"Journalists"? You are being moderated in your high praise of 'journalists',
that is, professional members of the highly professional journalistic
profession?

Cruel. SO cruel. How can you be so CRUEL?

I mean, while we're discussing particle physics, don't you believe that the
English, drama, theater, and communications majors also need to eat?

And it's even worse, you are being even more cruel: You are suggesting that
the journalistic profession should pay attention to technical information and,
thus, push out the main technique of journalism back over 100 years: Use
communications of human experience and emotion to grab people by the heart,
the gut, and below the belt.

So CRUEL!

~~~
NY_Entrepreneur
Gee, some people really do NOT like facetious comments, parody, and humor!
What is it particle physicists: Don't understand humor?

~~~
NY_Entrepreneur
Gee, looks like a LOT of dedicated, devoted English majors here. Who would'a
thought?!

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indrax
>to spend billions of taxpayer dollars in search of a particle that likely
does not exist would have been wasteful

This is infuriating. A negative result is a successful experiment. Don't
hamper efforts to fund science with the argument that science might figure out
it was wrong.

Europe explored the universe where America did not.

~~~
jamesaguilar
> Europe explored the universe where America did not.

What did they get out of it? (Honest question.) Also, supposing the Higg's
Boson did exist and this experiment found it, how much benefit would the
average European derived? How much less benefit would people from other
countries enjoy?

~~~
lucasjung
Indeed. The question isn't, "Did this experiment advance scientific
knowledge," the question is, "Was this a prudent and appropriate use of tax
money, especially in light of the enormous opportunity costs inherent in _any_
expenditure of tax money?"

~~~
henrikschroder
That is ridiculous, ROI is relevant if you're talking about applied research
where you have a short-term goal and can make the calculation.

But the LHC is basic research, you can't do ROI calculations on that. Instead,
you dump as much money as you can into it, and then you know that decades down
the line, you'll be very happy that you did it.

~~~
jamesaguilar
> and then you know that decades down the line, you'll be very happy that you
> did it.

How do you know that? Has all blue sky research in history resulted in massive
benefits decades down the line?

~~~
bane
_Has all blue sky research in history resulted in massive benefits decades
down the line?_

That's the wrong question.

"Has blue sky research in history resulted in massive benefits decades down
the line?"

is a better one and the answer is a most definitive yes, many many _many_
times the amount of money put into it, on the order of trillions of dollars.

Do each and every blue sky pure R&D experiment yield such results? Heck no!
Neither does _any_ known investment vehicle.

~~~
jamesaguilar
> That's the wrong question.

I asked the question I meant to ask. The point is not that we should stop
doing blue sky research if examples exist where it has produced no benefit. It
is quite obvious that blue sky research has been useful to us over the course
of time. _That fact does not give anything called blue sky research carte
blanche to spend taxpayer money._

The point is to _weigh_ the likely benefits of all the various types of blue
sky research available to us at any given time and try to spend more on
research that is likely to be useful.

> Neither does any known investment vehicle.

And like any investment vehicle, I ask that we consider whether any given
piece of blue sky research is likely to appreciate or be a money sink. This
was, if you'll read back, my original query. I don't understand why the people
in this forum consider this question so outrageous.

~~~
wlievens
> I ask that we consider whether any given piece of blue sky research is
> likely to appreciate or be a money sink

Good idea in theory perhaps, but _how_ do you suggest to make that assessment?

~~~
dodo53
I think ironically the more obvious the return on investment of the research
is, the less sense it makes for government to fund it - the private sector is
more likely to fund something where the route to commercialisation is clear.

Or: basic science is a public good, and is underinvested in by free markets.

~~~
jaylevitt
DARPA's rule is that if more than 10% of their projects succeed, they're not
taking enough risks. Blue sky projects are presumably much, much lower
probability than that.

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melling
"Congress may feel that even though its 1993 decision to cancel the American
alternative to CERN—the Superconducting Super Collider—was generally met with
chagrin by the American physics community, it may have been the right move one
after all: to spend billions of taxpayer dollars in search of a particle that
likely does not exist would have been wasteful."

I'm a little surprised by that comment. The SSC would have be almost 3x more
powerful than the LHC. I still feel like particle physics has been set back
decades.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider>

~~~
idlewords
It was, especially considering what that program was cut for - the
International Space Station!

------
idlewords
That's an utterly misleading headline. The Higgs boson is not excluded in the
mass range 115-145 GeV, and there won't be enough evidence for a null result
(or discovery) until at least November.

More context here:

[http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2011/08/higgs-wont-come-
out-...](http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2011/08/higgs-wont-come-out-of-
closet-part-ii.html)

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quandrum
Incorrect, exaggerated title.

They have 95% confidence that it's not in the 145-466 GeV range.

They haven't searched the 114-145 GeV range. There's still plenty of work to
be done, and sensationalist headlines only serve to mis-inform.

~~~
MaxGabriel
I don't know how likely other accelerators are to have found the Higgs-Boson,
but the article at least makes an attempt to back up its claim:

"Lower energy levels have been accessible to smaller accelerators, such as the
Tevatron at Fermilab and the LEP—the LHC’s predecessor at CERN—and neither
collider had found it. Perhaps the Higgs does not exist at all."

~~~
idlewords
Neither collider has enough data in those mass ranges to give any useful
result. That's WHY the LHC got built.

------
Eliezer
It's too early to call this one for sure, but still, I'm proudly on the record
as betting against the Higgs.

<http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Bets_registry>

~~~
archgoon
You bet even odds. Does this mean you are equally likely to expect a Higgs as
not, or simply that your belief of there being no Higgs is equal to that of
RolfAndreassen's belief that there is one? Genuinely curious here.

~~~
gjm11
The odds (and size of bet) were proposed by the other party. So all you can
deduce is that Eliezer thinks Pr(Higgs)<1/2. (If you have a good estimate of
Eliezer's risk aversion level for bets of that size, you might be able to get
a slightly better estimate, but my guess is that it's extremely close to
zero.)

~~~
archgoon
Yes, that's why I asked him.

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hypersoar
This is rather beside the point, but why must they call it the "God Particle"?
According to Wikipedia, it was coined in a popsci book when the writer's
editor wouldn't let him call them "goddamn particles". So now we're stuck with
this hollow, cliché, uninformative phrase for eternity.

~~~
wlievens
Plus it feeds the religious nuts, and Dan Brown.

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andrewflnr
Maybe its irrational, but kind of hope they don't find it. It's almost
gratifying, definitely exhilarating, to know that particle physics is still a
fresh frontier with plenty of territory to be discovered. Supersymmetric
particles seem to be unlikely too. It seems like we're almost back at the
drawing board.

So if it turns out that it doesn't exist, where do we go from here? What are
the alternative theories? It's been a while since I went into particle physics
at all deeply, so I don't know all the leading theories and their pros and
cons.

~~~
idlewords
Particle physics has been chugging along for thirty years without a major
discovery. Everything fits the Standard Model to a depressing degree. The
worst-case scenario is that we'll actually find a Higgs boson in the expected
range... and then nothing else.

It's perfectly possible that further interesting physics takes place at energy
scales too far beyond the reach of any accelerator we can build in the next
few hundred years.

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nazgulnarsil
I should place a long bet regarding dark matter...

~~~
teraflop
The Higgs boson has essentially nothing to with dark matter, as far as we
know. In fact, they're not even in the same category: the Higgs boson is a
theoretical prediction that has yet to be observed (or conclusively ruled
out), whereas dark matter is a real, observable thing in the cosmos that we
don't yet have a theory to explain.

~~~
zzzmarcus
Dark matter has not been observed, hence the name. We know something is there,
but we don't know what is is and we have not seen it.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Its gravitational effects have been observed, that is how we know it is there.
Nobody has _seen_ it, but little in the sky is actually accessible via visible
wavelengths.

~~~
evgen
_A_ gravitational anomaly has been observed, but the source of this anomaly is
not just invisible to the visible wavelengths but from all wavelengths we can
measure. "Dark matter" sounded a bit better than "unicorn turds" I guess, but
at the moment each is equally likely.

~~~
gjm11
> at the moment each is equally likely.

Impossible. Unicorn turds would be a variety of dark matter; if most of the
apparent mass in the universe were made of unicorn turds, the dark matter
hypothesis would be correct. (Unless they were _very sparkly_ unicorn turds,
emitting enough light for us to detect from far off.)

Further: they'd be a very boring kind of dark matter: the same kind of stuff
as we, the earth, the moon, etc., are made of. And there's very good reason
already to believe that there isn't enough of that to account for the
gravitational anomalies you get if you assume no dark matter.

I therefore declare: Pr(anomaly comes from unicorn turds) is much smaller than
Pr(anomaly comes from dark matter).

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bcl
The LHC hasn't been running at 7GeV since March. AFAIK they have not fixed all
the splices and are currently maxing out at around 3.5GeV

You can watch it live here (currently it is off):

[http://op-webtools.web.cern.ch/op-webtools/vistar/vistars.ph...](http://op-
webtools.web.cern.ch/op-webtools/vistar/vistars.php?usr=LHC1)

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mathattack
The should/shouldn't argument is really about Free Riding basic research. For
most companies this problem means deferring basic rEsearch to govt. Both
directly (funding research) and indirectly (IP protection and care policy)
governments free ride each others research. The US isn't perfect but generally
we are the the horse and not the rider.

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mikk0j
Well, Higgs Boson is aptly named the "God particle" - it seems likelier and
likelier that it doesn't exist.

