
Have Scientists Found Two Different Higgs Bosons? - ColinWright
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/12/14/have-scientists-found-two-different-higgs-bosons/
======
hardtke
The most important lesson I learned in graduate school came from a scientist
at Los Alamos who told me "three sigma effects happen in physics much more
often than they should"

~~~
mikeyouse
You think that's bad?

How about in finance, where the CFO of Goldman Sachs bemoaned that they had
"25-sigma events, several days in a row" during the financial crisis.

[http://lukenotricks.blogspot.com/2010/03/fabled-25-sigma-
eve...](http://lukenotricks.blogspot.com/2010/03/fabled-25-sigma-event.html)

~~~
mootothemax
Surely at the claimed 25-sigma point, the problem is more with our ability to
measure than the probability itself? Claims about the space shuttle's
reliability come to mind.

Am I the only one who feels that a claim of probability on this level is
basically religion on one level or another?

~~~
T-hawk
The problem is that the model was fantastically far off from reality. (For
whatever reason - incompetence, bad inputs, willful deception, religion -
doesn't matter for this discussion.)

I could construct a prediction that the high air temperature in New York
tomorrow will be 80 degrees Celsius with a standard deviation of 3 degrees.
Then when the observed value is actually 5 degrees, that's 25 standard
deviations off from my "prediction". But it doesn't mean that the observed
event was actually a 1-in-billions occurrence, that New York experienced an
astronomically unlikely cold snap. It means my prediction was unrealistic and
wrong, that it didn't model reality.

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RockofStrength
Of course everyone is freshly aware of the neutrino fiasco, so this anomaly
will probably be handled with extra skepticism and timidity. Without more data
we can only make conjectures based on Occam's razor, etc.

~~~
jlgreco
The neutrino fiasco was very unfortunate since by all accounts the scientists
involved went public with some seriously stressed skepticism. That heads
rolled because outsiders ignored the skepticism is rather distressing.

~~~
Osmium
Heads rolled?! I remember the neutrino story being handled with complete
professionalism at the time. I wasn't aware there'd been any new developments.
Do you have a link?

~~~
wcoenen
[http://www.nature.com/news/embattled-neutrino-project-
leader...](http://www.nature.com/news/embattled-neutrino-project-leaders-step-
down-1.10371)

~~~
Osmium
Much appreciated, thanks. That's absolutely tragic, and a failure of the
scientific community and media at large. The media for precipitating it, and
the scientific community for letting it happen.

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gwillen
I (with minimal physics background, I admit) would bet on systematic error.
We're seeing one mass from one decay path, and a _very slightly different_
mass from a different decay path. The best explanation seems to _me_ to be
that, for one or both of the decay paths, there's a problem in how we're
computing the Higgs mass.

~~~
stephengillie
Wikipedia says this is possible with a more complex theory. Are we going with
the simplest theory due to Occam's razor?

 _The Minimal Standard Model as described above contains the simplest possible
model for the Higgs mechanism with just one Higgs field. However, it also is
possible to have an extended Higgs sector with additional doublets or
triplets. The non-minimal Higgs sector favoured by theory are the two-Higgs-
doublet models (2HDM), which predict the existence of a quintet of scalar
particles: two CP-even neutral Higgs bosons h0 and H0, a CP-odd neutral Higgs
boson A0, and two charged Higgs particles H±._

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson#Alternative_models>

~~~
ars
The W and Z bosons are basically the same, except one is charged and the other
neutral. And due to that they have different masses.

So it's certainly possible the same thing could be happening here.

~~~
gus_massa
The W and Z particles are a little more different. The W+- particles only
interact with L-hilarity particles. The Z particle "prefers" the L particles,
but also interacts with the R particles.

It's more complicated. There is a W^0 particle that is the neutral equivalent
of the W^+ and W^- particles, all of them have the same mass. There is another
particle called A, that is like a photon with mass (but it "sees" the
hypercharge of the particles, not the charge)

Combining the W^0 and A particles, it's possible to get two new particles the
Z^0 and the photon. In this combination the Z^0 has all the mass and the
photon has no mass. It's more easy to understand some experiments using the
Z^0 and the photon, so to make some explanations more clear it's better to use
them instead of the W^0 and the A.

IIRC, for low energy experiments it'd better to use Z^0 and photons, and for
high energy experiments it's better to use W^0 and A.

~~~
ars
You are mixing conjectures from string theory and other theories with known
physics.

I can found no info on the W^0 or the A, R and L are a type of conjectured
parity, not actual particles, and hypercharge is an obsolete concept.

You should be more careful about where you learn physics, and very very
careful to distinguish known physics, or theories with evidence from
conjectures and ideas. Both are necessary - but don't mix them up.

~~~
gus_massa
What?! I'm taking only about particle physic (I don't know almost anything
about string theory).

The W^+,W^0 and W^- are a weak-isospin triplet of bosons that are the carriers
of the "real" weak force, assuming that the SU(2)_L symmetry holds for the
weak-isospin doublets (electron_L-neutrilo_L), ...,(up_quark_L,
down'_quark_L),... (Sometimes the weak-isospin triplet is written as W_0,W_1
and W_2, using another base.)

I rememberd incorrectly the name of of the particles "A". Sorry. The correct
name is B^0. This is the of the field associated to the _weak_ hypercharge
with the U(1) symmetry. I know hat the _old_ hypercharge is not more a very
useful concept, but I was trying to simplify a little the notation and I
dropped the _weak_ part.

All of this is the electroweak force theory (unification of the
electromagnetic force and the weak force).
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroweak_interaction>

In this theory each fermions can be classified as L or R chirality (it's a
"property" of the particles, not an independent thing) (the mass of the
particles makes this a little more complicated). The "real" weak" force only
interacts with the L version of the particles.

This has many experimental results, for example the ratio between the mass of
the Z^0 and the W^+- particle is indirectly related to the ratio between the
coupling of the Z^0 and the L and R electrons.

All of this id proved beyond doubt, but it assumes that the particles doesn't
have mass. They have an apparent mass created by the Higgs mechanisms (or
something equivalent), so there must be Higgs bosons out there. So the only
missing part is to prove the existence of the Higgs bosons, and it's almost
done (5-sigmas next year?).

------
brudgers
Other than monotheistic bias, why should multiple species of god particles be
surprising?

Perhaps the first should be called "Odin" and the second "Loki."

~~~
whatshisface
My joke sensors might be burnt out, but...

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

Look at the 'periodic table' on the right. Everything has a place, and makes
sense. The quarks and leptons have their pattens with increasing mass ect, and
there is one Gauge boson for each basic force of nature. If there was a second
Z boson... where would you put it?

~~~
brudgers
Where does one put deuterium and tritium or carbon 14?

The model ain't the reality.

The standard model has six quarks, up from the three initially proposed.

In fairness, discarding data which does not fit the model has not been without
it's practitioners. However, the method's history is somewhat less than
distinguished.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark#History>

~~~
whatshisface
You put deuterium and carbon 14 'on top' of their respective elements on the
periodic table. (or at least in my mental model)

> In fairness, discarding data which does not fit the model has not been
> without it's practitioners.

I'm not trying to say we should discard data, I am pointing out that we would
need to discard our model. (or at least a part of it) And discarding a model
that has been around for so long is always surprising. (or at least to some
people)

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Zenst
Why stop at 2, for all we know others are created by the impact in another
universe(s). We don't really know. But sure is fun and the whole higgs boson
mystery is still very much alive.

I don't believe we will truely understand the higgs boson until we fully
understand gravity and more so explain why it is weaker than it should be.

------
Confusion
Probably not:
[http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/atlas_higg...](http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/atlas_higgs_results_one_or_two_higgs-99078)

------
laserDinosaur
If anyone is wondering the answer is: No.

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

~~~
cryptoz
That's about TechCrunch articles that talk about Apple. It's not about real
science and makes no sense in this context.

~~~
laserDinosaur
"Have scientists found the source of immortality?" "Have scientists invented
flying shoes?" Just because it's a scientific article does not mean it's any
less applicable.

The headline could easily have been "New data shows possibility of" or "New
theory suggests" or countless others.

~~~
cryptoz
Your examples are ridiculous. The answer to the question is not "No". The
question has no answer right now other than "maybe, we'll see". Not everything
is so black and white.

Yes, there are other possibilities for the headline. No, the silly law about
internet headlines does not extend to articles with real information about
real science where real questions are posed and currently unanswered.

~~~
laserDinosaur
If the answer is "We don't know", then the article should not be posting
headlines as questions they don't have an answer too. Unless they are just
fishing for traffic.

~~~
cryptoz
The website linked here in a Scientific American blog. Their job description
is probably two words: "ask questions". Questions are extremely important.

> If the answer is "We don't know", then the article should not be posting
> headlines as questions they don't have an answer too.

Am I feeding a troll? This is silly. Publicly asking questions that you don't
have an answer to is perhaps the single most important feat humanity has ever
achieved.

Just calm down about the question, yeah? It's important, and it's not "fishing
for traffic". It's a real, serious question.

~~~
finnw
> _Am I feeding a troll?_

You just disproved Betteridge's law

~~~
rb12345
You can do that far better by applying it to itself ("Can any headline which
ends in a question mark be answered by the word no?") or with a question
requiring a non-yes/no answer ("How many Higgs bosons has ATLAS really
found?").

