
Proof of extra dimensions possible next year: CERN - joelhaus
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AE3QU20101115?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtopNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Top+News%29
======
btilly
For a long time I wondered what the Higgs boson was about, and then I saw a
good explanation in Scientific American.

Here is what it comes down to. It turns out that the laws of physics become
greatly simplified if we can assert that, there are symmetries between
apparently disparate forces. For instance we would like the electromagnetic
force and the weak force to be exactly equivalent. There is a pretty obvious
problem with this assertion though, and it is that those forces are obviously
very different, electromagnetism can work at any distance while the weak force
works on the scale of a nucleus.

But physicists are clever, and came up with a solution. What happens if the
symmetry exists, but there is a field whose job is to differentiate the two
which makes it very likely that you'll be in a stable state with them very
different? This is called "spontaneous symmetry breaking". In our universe,
the weak and electromagnetic forces are different, in another their roles
could be reversed. But in the actual laws of physics, they are entirely
symmetric.

On the surface this would seem to be an assertion without content. But it is
not. According to QM, every field must be be carried by an associated boson.
Those bosons are particles that can be detected. We can predict some of the
properties of those bosons. If we can find them, then we've verified the
theory.

With this approach physicists put together something they call the standard
model. It predicts a whole zoo of particles. Every one of which has been
discovered except one. And that remaining one is the Higgs boson, whose job is
to make the masses of the photon, W boson, and Z boson all different.

Now with that in mind you can read <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson>
and some of it might make some modicum of sense.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model> gives more background.

~~~
chewbranca
There is a great book about the Higgs boson called 'The God
Particle'([http://www.amazon.com/God-Particle-Universe-Answer-
Question/...](http://www.amazon.com/God-Particle-Universe-Answer-
Question/dp/0618711686/)) I haven't read the new version, but I thoroughly
enjoyed the original book, highly recommended.

------
jonhendry
Will we have to upgrade our brand-new TV sets _again_?

------
joshes
"These experiments have shown the power of the link-up of 140 computing
centers around the world known as the Grid which processes the vast amounts of
information that ion collisions produce."

I wonder if there is any sort of distributed, volunteer computing program that
those of us so inclined could participate in to lend a hand to the processing
efforts; something along the lines of SETI@home and Folding@home would
certainly be helpful I would think. Such high amounts of new, raw data could
surely use any help that they can get in the processing stage.

~~~
aquadoctorbob
LHC@home seems to be the closest thing, but Wikipedia notes:

> BOINC users who are considering joining this project should know that it
> only occasionally has work; the project is used for design and repair
> considerations related to the LHC. There are currently no plans to use the
> project to do computation on the data that will be collected by the LHC.

