
A Higgs Setback - rpledge
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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rjprins
I find the remark about not funding such elementary research silly. It could
be said that _not_ finding the Higgs particle is a bigger discovery than
actually finding it. Either way, it's about gaining knowledge.

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choxi
I like when physics theories don't work out, it means the real answer is
probably even more interesting

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Yhippa
Well, that's science for you. No shame if they don't end up finding the Higgs
boson. You just regroup, devise alternate theories and move on. Surely with
all of the data there's something we can learn about this.

There as something interesting in the article about Congress cancelling the
Superconducting Super Collider. There is something to be said about how
society values finding particles that could change humanity against more
mundane needs like economic stimulation and ensuring it's people are fed.

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andrewcooke
how would finding this "change humanity"? i know that it's been sold as "the
god particle" etc etc, but what changes do you expect if it _is_ found?

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foob
It's not always obvious what the applications of advances in physics will be
until long after they happen. Do you think that Maxwell could have possibly
foreseen the depth of the impact that electricity and magnetism would have on
mankind? Did Einstein expect that general relativity would allow for timing
corrections in GPS satellites? Did Heisenberg realize the potential impact of
a scanning tunneling microscope?

Basic physics research has a long history of leading the way for technological
advances. I expect that, in one way or another, this trend will continue in
the future.

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andrewcooke
well, there's a pretty simple argument that maxwell could have used, but which
current particle physics cannot:

the experiments that maxwell did were in "normal conditions". they didn't need
extreme energies, or scales. so any new knowledge could clearly affect our
everyday lives.

in contrast, if the _only_ effects that a theory has are at the scale where
you need to construct huge machines to examine conditions found only in remote
astronomical objects then it's much harder to make the same case.

in other words - if there is some useful application for this then we could
also use that to test the science (much more cheaply and simply than we are
doing now). there is _huge_ pressure to find some "laboratory scale"
application because that would lead to a breakthrough that avoids all this
tedious messing around with massive underground machines. that no such test is
possible argues strongly against any application.

this is a very strong argument. you might say, for example, that finding the
higgs particle could lead to a simplified explanation of X that would improve
Y and so Z. but every scientist working on this is already desperately
searching for consequences like X because they could then jump to Z and so
prove that the higgs particle exists....

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yaks_hairbrush
Don't understand why Peter Higgs was so upset about Hawking's wager. Hawking
is a notorious loser of bets.

