

New particle observed at LHC - ximeng
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16301908

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jessriedel
Just so it's clear, this (merely) composite particle is made of known quarks
and is predicted by the Standard Model. It's basically like producing element
113 on the periodic table.

The discovery of a new fundamental particle (like a Z-prime), or of a
composite not in agreement with the standard model (like a pentaquark, kinda),
would be much bigger news.

~~~
shaggy
Sure, discovery outside the standard model would be bigger news, but this is
still very exciting, imo, for a few reasons. It shows that the LHC has real
value and is working. It shows that the science is right and now it's been
confirmed. It also shows that we can continually gain understanding of how
everything works which makes us smarter as a whole. It may not be sensational,
but it sure is fantastic to see the progress being made.

~~~
cobrausn
I might get downvoted for this, but so be it.

What value does the LHC have outside of the scientific community? It's not, as
you say, 'progressing our understanding', it's more or less just giving us
empirical evidence that the long-dead giants of physics were correct. It's
like a very expensive unit test for reality.

Is it just me, or are we, as a species, just 'spinning our wheels'
scientifically? I'm hoping to see major scientific advancement that pushes us
forward sometime within my lifetime, but I'm beginning to have doubts that all
of the new 'super science' will ever leave the theoretical...

~~~
mattheww
No, measurements at the LHC really are, and will, progress our understanding.
Let me give the measurement of the Higgs as an example. There is very strong
evidence that a Higgs boson should exist. An observation of the Higgs boson
would provide empirical confirmation of that idea. However, the fact there's a
Higgs boson doesn't expand our understanding very much, since after all, we
strongly suspected it was there.

Measurements of the Higgs boson quantum numbers, on the other hand, provide
very useful expansions of our understanding. The parameter space of possible
Higgs bosons is so large that its impossible to know where it could be and
different regions correspond two very different possible physics. So the
measurement of the Higgs' mass, spin, couplings, and even the number of Higgs
bosons are actually _quantitative_ improvements to our understanding.

The problem is that if you're not a physicist, it is very difficult to explain
to you why this measurement is something more than empirical. Lay people can
easily understand that a new particle has been observed, but not so much how
that expands our understanding.

I'd also like to point out that most of the people who came up with the ideas
that are being tested are still alive. The standard model as we know it didn't
really start taking shape until the 1970s.

~~~
cobrausn
Out of curiosity, then, what potential applications could be had from these
physical measurements of the Higgs, i.e., where could we see any real-world
benefits of our newfound knowledge?

Everything I have ever read about it never divulges any of this information,
so if you know, I'd like to know.

I should also point out that I'm not 'against' these kinds of projects, merely
dubious about their usefulness outside of the scientific community (and hoping
I'm wrong).

~~~
mattheww
Honestly, nobody knows what kind of potential applications could come from
these measurements. But by the same token, nobody knew that Fermi's splitting
of the atom would lead to nuclear power (and weapons), measurement of Hydrogen
line splittings would eventually lead to semi-conductors, and the study of
bacteria would eventually lead to antibiotics.

Besides the giving us applications that we can literally not imagine today,
the "engineering" feats required to do cutting edge science always brings new
technologies that benefit the real world. Just think that accelerators that
would have been used for cutting-edge particle physics 50 years ago are now
commonly used in hospitals to treat cancer.

~~~
cobrausn
I agree completely with the second statement (and it is a big reason why I
support NASA and space exploration in general), but Uranium, Hydrogen,
bacteria... these are all things we can study easily and interact with all the
time, and studying them can produce uses for them. The Higgs is something we
have to spend 7 billion dollars (admittedly a pittance in the grand scheme)
just to have the potential to observe it, so surely you can see why I (and
many others, I'm sure) might be a bit skeptical about ever having a use for
any knowledge we gain about it outside of academia.

I really hope you are correct and this expansion of our knowledge about the
makeup of the universe proves to have some real world benefits down the line,
I just find myself a bit unsure about the truth of that statement these days.

~~~
bermanoid
_The Higgs is something we have to spend 7 billion dollars (admittedly a
pittance in the grand scheme) just to have the potential to observe it, so
surely you can see why I (and many others, I'm sure) might be a bit skeptical
about ever having a use for any knowledge we gain about it outside of
academia._

Similar arguments can be used to suggest that we should rid colleges of
literary theory, gender studies, philosophy, sociology, large swaths of
psychology and economics, most fine arts, probably half of research-level
math, and so on, leaving only the fields that consistently give actionable
real world results (basically leaving only the pseudo-vocational fields like
CS, education, and engineering, and a very trimmed list of research fields
like chemistry, bio, medicine, and the few cherry-picked bits of practical
physics that we need so that the other fields can still progress).

We reject these arguments, though, because as a society we value (and fund
accordingly) the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, even in cases where
it's highly disputed whether there's any "knowledge" to speak of at all (I
won't name names, but that list above...).

Of course, then the matter of cost comes in, and I certainly wouldn't claim
that 7 billion is an amount we should shrug our shoulders at, whether
information about the Higgs alone is worth that amount of money or not is
definitely up for debate...as much as I might like to bitch about how
inconclusive, statistically flawed, and poorly conceived most psychology
studies are, they're not costing billions of dollars to run.

~~~
mkramlich
> Similar arguments can be used to suggest that we should rid colleges of
> literary theory, gender studies, philosophy, sociology, [...] most fine
> arts,

you say that like it's a bad thing. sounds like a win. at least in terms of
reducing burden on all taxpayers (Fed backed student loans) and parents (esp
middle-class: too rich or too white for enough financial aid, too poor to foot
the skyrocketing fees) and the larger economy (no job degrees). Keeping in
mind you can study anything you want, at any time, at any point in your life,
for free or at least much cheaper if no universities involved. Also certain
fields are not as much anchored to objective reality as they are to the
opinions of a small subset of like-minded people. I can come up with an
elaborate theory on an owl-based patriarchy and write a book on it, and even
recruit some other nutters to back me up but it doesn't mean it's provably
true or actionable and constructive.

~~~
bandushrew
". I can come up with an elaborate theory on an owl-based patriarchy and write
a book on it, and even recruit some other nutters to back me up but it doesn't
mean it's provably true or actionable and constructive."

or some idiot could study ant trails and provide data that could improve the
solution to certain algorithms.

Sure, life would be simpler and more controllable if we knew what we were
going to discover before we discovered it, but we dont. Come up with an
elaborate theory on owl based patriarchy that gives some other smart chap an
epiphany about the behavior of whale tribal groups, and who knows what
improvements your investigations might provide for.

Of course, if you just make it all up, you are not practicing science, you are
practicing fraud.

~~~
mkramlich
I think you missed the point of what I was saying. :)

My owl patriarchy comment was an off-the-cuff made-up example intended to
standin for the soft sciences and fuzzy academic fields, like women's studies,
literature theory, philosophy, etc. which really don't exist or have any
objective use or application outside of academic circles. And which are, at
the same time, topics you don't necessarily have to go to university and spend
tons of time and money to become "educated" on. Even the need to be certified
in those fields is only required for you to go on to become a certifier of
other future potential certifiers, a sort of incestuous perpetual motion
machine.

I was _not_ talking about science or experiments or data or anything like
that. And yes, we agree, synergy and serendipity and cross-pollination between
subjects is a good thing.

~~~
bandushrew
The problem I had is that I can equally well imagine someone making that kind
of point about the idea of spending money to study ant trails, without the
benefit of hindsight the idea is just kind of ridiculous. sure _that_ will
lead to new ideas in computer theory and AI.

I think you will find that there are practical uses for at least aspects of
literature theory (ask google).

And philosophy has driven humanity forward for thousands of years, the fact
you bring it up as possibly useless tells me that you have failed to educate
yourself as you should.

I cannot speak about women's studies, as I have no idea what they cover, but
on the whole history tells me that where a subject drives people to think
deeply about something, humanity generally wins out eventually.

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cperciva
_The new particle is made up of a 'beauty quark' and a 'beauty anti-quark',
which are then bound together_

Or in more common terms: It's a bottom/antibottom pair.

I would have loved to see the names "truth" and "beauty" catch on for the
third generation quarks, but sadly "top" and "bottom" won.

~~~
zerostar07
TBH i dislike those quirky names because they become fodder for popular media
nonsense. Just like the way the "God particle" can be misunderstood for having
something to do with religion.

~~~
dicemoose
Higgs actually wanted to call it "the goddamn particle."

~~~
daliusd
Actually it was Leon Lederman who wrote book "The God Particle".

Source:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jun/30/higgs.boson.ce...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jun/30/higgs.boson.cern)

~~~
michaels0620
That is a great book. It's well written and touches on details that most
"physics for the masses" books skip. I also regret the use of the term God
Particle though. I know he was being cheeky but it is all too easy for people
to grab onto something like that and believe that this is some sort of
religious quest.

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vectorpush
Wow. I'm surprised to see so many anti-science comments on HN. If you cannot
extrapolate how pushing the boundaries of scientific knowledge is beneficial
to humanity as a whole then I'm sort of at a loss. The money spent on the LHC
is a drop in the bucket (for example, the USA spends 70 times as much in _one
year_ on defense alone).

~~~
bostonpete
I've never criticized the LHC, but couldn't your comment apply to any
scientific research? Since resources are bounded, you can't automatically say
that _any_ scientific research is worth spending billions of dollars of money
on.

I don't think it's productive to label as "anti-science" anyone who asks
sincere questions about whether LHC (or any project) is worth the price-tag.

~~~
vectorpush
_I don't think it's productive to label as "anti-science" anyone who asks
sincere questions about whether LHC (or any project) is worth the price-tag._

Asking questions is great, the anti-science rhetoric is the kind that suggests
that research isn't worth the cost if the objective knowledge is not obviously
or immediately applicable outside the lab. Science works in discrete steps.

 _you can't automatically say that any scientific research is worth spending
billions of dollars of money on._

Not all researchers are created equal, so I can't _automatically_ say it, but
I'd be hard pressed to name a field of cutting edge research that I think
doesn't deserve to be well funded. The reality is, science is pretty damn
cheap for what it yields (e.g. the modern world). You can't really put a price
on universal truth.

------
ars
"it is a boson - the label given to particles that carry the forces of
Nature."

That's not correct. All force carriers are bosons, but not all bosons are
force carriers. I sent them an email telling them, maybe they'll correct it.

~~~
ars
I guess they got my email, they updated the article and removed the line
entirely (rather than fixing it). They also significantly fleshed out the
article compared to 2 hours ago. The "last updated" time was not changed
though.

How come some papers keep a record of changes/corrections at the bottom of the
article, and others just silently change it?

~~~
dalke
It depends on the internal guidelines. I read somewhere that some sites have a
policy that a page can be updated in the first 24 hours without making a note
of the change. I can't find anything to back up this memory now. I can suggest
the analogy that it's like an article in the first edition of a newspaper
(back in the days when newspapers would run multiple editions), which by the
final edition has had more review.

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JacobAldridge
A reminder for me to practice pronouncing 'quark' like 'quart' - I think that
original plan has been overun in practice and 'quark' is like 'lark', but I
like the occasional air of eccentric pretentiousness.

~~~
ars
I still pronounce it like lark, and I don't intend to change.

~~~
nknight
I'm utterly confused. I've never heard it pronounced like "lark". When/where
has that been common?

~~~
Toucan
Star Trek:Deep Space 9 ?

~~~
nknight
Er, OK, I find that much closer to "quart" than "lark". Maybe we're dealing
with some sort of accent/dialect issue here, and/or people are hearing
something far more subtle than I am.

~~~
jonnathanson
I think it's a regional/accent thing. I'm on the West Coast, and I've always
used (and heard) the DS9-style intonation of the word (which, to my ear,
sounds a lot more like "quart" than "lark").

Midwesterners and New Englanders are probably more likely to hear and use the
"lark" pronunciation in the word. (And the James Joyce explanation needs to
take into account that Joyce, being Irish, would have pronounced and rhymed
things a bit differently from an American).

~~~
rprospero
Midwesterner (Indiana) here. I've never heard anyone use the "lark"
pronunciation.

------
Create
"How should we make it attractive for them [young people] to spend 5,6,7 years
in our field, be satisfied, learn about excitement, but finally be qualified
to find other possibilities?" -- H. Schopper

------
colinm
How come scientists ccan find all this shit, yet can't cure the common cold??

~~~
NolF
The common cold is not a single virus but many many many different strands
which are continually mutating. Ever gotten the flu after the vaccine? That's
because the vaccine doesn't target all flu strands, merely what the developers
identify to be the main strands of the flu virus for that season.

These particles are very difficult to find, extraordinary amounts of
electricity are required to create them for the brief period of time they
exist independently. Incredibly sophisticated equipment is used to detect the
signs that such particles emit, and mind boggling computational power is used
to sort through the petabytes of data gathered through thousands of collisions
to be able to identify a particle with sufficient confidence.

Due to the unchanging nature of particles and their components, and the
robustness of experiment methodology, and theoretical models to assist what
one may look at, finding a particle becomes practicable.

~~~
dalke
Or to put it another way, there are 300 million Americans. If it costs $10 per
person per cold strain per year, and there are 10 new infectious strains per
year which could be inoculated against, then that's $30 billion every year.

The total cost of the LHC is about $7 billion, spread over more than a decade
and shared between many countries. The Apollo program, btw, cost about $129
billion in 2011 dollars.

