With deference to Aleksander Ulyanov's thread; http://www.politicalforum.com/science/293656-scientists-confirm-higgs-boson-detected.html I repeat the article's last line. Somebody may be looking for a good sig.
But a great deal of the ground work for LHC was developed in the US at the Fermilab's TeVatron (Batavia, Ill.) as well as much of the Supercollider research that occured before cancellation. The Fermilab Tevatron was a workhorse that has been used to provide a huge amount of data for all but the most massive of entities. It's limit was 998 GeV or almost 1 TeV. BTW - The Supercollider was TRULY A SUPER-COLLIDER! Here's a comparison with LHC: The SSC's planned collision energy of 40 TeV is almost three times the planned 14 TeV of the Large Hadron Collider[./B]. LHC is running at about 7 TeV now (3.5 TeV per beam) and will ramp up to 14 TeV over the next year or two or three or... Physicists would've LOVED SSC!!!!
Neil DeGrasse Tyson was right on the money about this(Stephen Hawking, and almost certainly other scientists as well, has also commented on this and how stupid of a decision it was). One of the essays he wrote for Nature(could be the wrong publication, can't remember exactly) ended by saying that since Congress cancelled the SSC, the United States would now sit back and watch science evolve from the sidelines(at least when it comes to physics), instead of being the leader as we had been for most of the 20th century. I will never understand the anti-science attitude of some on the right in this country. Can't say I know what causes it, but my suspicion is religion and politics. Science is associated with atheism, which is obviously something detested by religious folks, and the right-wing politicians main base are religious folks. Why would they spend money on something that promotes elitism and benefits a cause associated with the left. That's just my hunch. I'm sure some will claim they were trying to save money or something, but that's bullcrap, because the amount of money spent on NASA and what would have been spent on the SSC is peanuts. NDT's point about the money wasted in Iraq gets it exactly right, and that's not even counting the money spent on the war itself, which was entirely unnecessary(I do not include Afghanistan in this assessment).
But American scientist are anything but sitting on the sidelines watching. More than 1800 American scientists, engineers and graduate students from US institutions collaborated on the design and conduction of the LHC experiments involving the ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, LHCb, LHCf and TOTEM detectors. The SSC was a very expensive commitment, no doubt about it - (GAO estimated the cost would exceed $11 billion). But once started, we should've seen it through. We don't have much problem tossing away a trillion dollars and 4500 lives in an unnecessary war, maintaining the commitment and seeing it through for 9 years.
The religious community has been at war with science for millennium. Once they accept something... they also insist on it... World is flat... there are big pillars borrowed from some other religion propping it up... its in the bible. Ptolemy models anyone? 1500 years of persecution for heresy for suggesting otherwise. Because the bible says the sun and the moon stopped moving so the Jews could slaughter their enemy... and says this is written in the book of Jasher, which is not canon... so everything has to rotate around the Earth... Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler... I mean... the answer is obvious. If we figure out the answers, it is unlikely we will find an old man sitting on a throne... so such must be resisted... certainly not funded more. Science is cool for one reason to the religious right... missile guidance. We pretty much got that down. It has served its purpose. We can fly, we can shoot things, we can shoot things down. Unlocking the mysteries of the universe is heresy... there is no mystery. God did it.
While I share your sentiments regarding Congress's cancellation of SSC in 1992, your highly focused negative criticism of the Right disregards the fact that both the House and Senate that were responsible for the decision were led by Democrats, plus we had a Democrat executive administration. That doesn't completely negate your criticism - just tempers it a bit. We have to be careful about assessing blame. We seem to live in an era where both Left and Right have lost any ability to see anything other than evil in their counterpart's worldview. It's unfortunate because both sides really do have their pros and cons. In the long run, having the pendulum of power swing between the two just may be the better situation all the way around, rather than if either party retained power long enough for the negatives of their agendas to be sufficiently actualized as to do irreparable harm. That being said, traditionalists are more prone to clinging to established ideas and less willing to push out and expand their horizons. However, many great scientists of the classical period were Christians and believers in the Bible. Newton spent more of his life attending to theological issues than he did investigating the laws of the physical universe. It is also good to remember that the formation of scientific consensus itself has presented obstacles to new insights. Many of the greatest breakthroughs in science were at the hands of those who were willing to think outside the prevailing scientific, as well as cultural, viewpoint. And the opaqueness of that box can be influenced by more than just conservative-traditionalists. The tendency of science to sometimes clot into obstacles that actually hinder the free flow of innovation and new ideas is often more of an issue from within science rather than the result of prevailing external political/philosophical views. Scientists themselves, being human like the rest of us, are also prone toward establishing rigidity in their viewpoints. That, in combination with the nature of the government/scientific funding mechanism and Congress's ever shifting outlook on spending priorities as a function of the economy and their own pet worldviews, can result in certain viewpoints becoming more viable than others. And NOT for scientific reasons. I don't wish to completely defend the Right in their views and opposition to several areas of science, but theoretical/experimental physics wasn't generally one of those ares.
Damn you and your reason. You are correct of course... I was just ranting. As a conservative it is particularly annoying to me. But if we get hit by an asteroid... it's the churches fault, setting us back 1500 years on that race.
LOL! Sorry. Usually I'm the one ranting and everyone else then "reasons" me to hell and back. And if we get hit by The Asteroid, it's probably the one the churches' Bible called "Wormwood" - you know, the one that makes the sun become sackcloth and the moon become blood - just before the last trumpet when "the Day of the Lord" has come. nyuk, nyuk,,,
BTW - LHC will be shutting down for a couple years (2015) to upgrade its energy capacity from 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam) to it's full 14 TeV capacity. It was only operating at half power due to the damage to the the supercooled magnets that was done nine days after the initial start up. The research continues though. There's a mountain of data to sift through, equivalent to about 700 years worth of DVD movies. Data acquisition systems at the collision detectors produce tens of petabytes of data (15,000 to 25,000 Terabytes) per year. This data is analyzed throughout the year by the world's largest grid-based computer network called the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid. The grid is composed of over 170 computing facilities in a worldwide network across 36 countries. I love this machine! And to think, the SSC Supercollider was to be almost 3 times the capacity as LHC!
What about the Higgs bosom? That will make enough money on Internet porn sites to fund all geek projects.
It was to be located at Waxahachie, Texas (just south of Dallas). It would've had a 54 mile main ring. LHC's is 17 miles (circumference). It would've been a GIANT. There was a time when America though big and did big. IMO, the cancellation of SSC was one of the first and most obvious evidences of our decline, even right after the Soviet demise which should've freed more resources for even grander scientific adventures.
Stupid...? Predictable for feminized matriarchies,...? Yes. America now functions based upon PoiticallyCorrect thinking which is similar to what husbands have always operated on at home. Keeping the little woman happy is now on a National Level. The direction for our expenditures which are limited resources is Welfare and Crime, plus the Pyramidology of providing eternal life for old people through extraordinary and expensive procedures for everyone through nationalized Health Insurance. Like the Pharaohs who would build great temples that they thought assured life forever, Medicare/Medicaid/Obamacare eat up 20% of the GNP that has producedthe fastest growing demographic population in the 80-90 year olds. Meanwhile, 1/4th of the Federal Budget or $1 Trillion dollars is spent on creating and supporting and growing fatherless ciminal minded/raised kids through Welfare Programs for Single Mothers. Before the fall of every past matriarchy, the military was destroyed by reduction in its finances, and by over protected, fatherless boys raised to protest against selective service and mandatory particiation in the defense of their own nation. The reduced finances was necessary to fund the Welfare programs to feed the poverty that resulted from wide open sexual promiscuity that produced the kids that kept this circle going into the future generations. The cost of Criminal Justice has always risen to a point that Laws were necessarily revoked because of putting to many people in prison. Abortion always became necessary to fight against the growth dependent single mothers. The hungry, under educated Barbarians filled the cities and formed gangs leasd by Alpha males with noi other means to survival than toinvade the rich suburbs or crime against even their own people. $ America does not have $ for what it needs, because it has been spend on what women want/... welfare and free health service without military selective service.
Re: PrometheusBound liked this post Thank you for the supporting response Mr Prometheus. I hope that the 2 billion Christians will relate to these sociological points of view and use the weight of their numbers toi save America before it is too late. They need get the Republicans to stop worrying about voting block of Welfare mothers and Feminists. Republicans need to striaght out attack those peope because the Truth is they are the problem, not the needed constituents: . Rev. 17:3 So he carried me away (in the spirit of thought), into the wilderness (of my imagination) and I saw (as if) a woman, ... .... (those who have Institutionalized a system of sexual seduction into a failed matrimony), sit upon a scarlet coloured beast (of a brazen and corrupt sexually misdirected economic system: [Dan 3:1-5]), full of names of (Pagan) blasphemy, having seven heads: (which existed in (1) Egypt, (2) Assyria, (3) Babylon, (4) Persia/Mede, (5) Greece, (6) Rome (7) the whole of Western Culture to follow)... ... having ten horns upon these seven heads: (1. Undivided Empire; capital Rome: [305 AD], 2. Western Roman Empire: (Romulus Augustus): [to 476 AD], 3. Eastern Roman: Byzantine Empire, [1453 AD] 4. Charlemagne, [800 - 1000 AD] 5. Holy Roman Empire, [1200 AD-1492 AD] 6. Italy, [Renaissance, 16th century] 7. Spain, [17th century] 8. France, [18th-19th Century] 9. Britain, [19th-20th century] 10. Nazi Germany, [20th century]) 11. America next…?
Well, I've got to admit that Christianity has a more manly attitude than this New Age wilting, but so can other codes of conduct, even the pagan ones you mention. Women themselves feel the dissatisfaction of having men kowtow to them. But they don't want to betray the Sisterhood, so they wind up unhappy without knowing why. Even our language has been distorted by the femininnies. The almost universal use of illogical phrasing such as, "If someone does this, they get that" also proves how powerful and mind-controlling these freaks are. It is about time we defy their claims of equality. They may think the use of he is wrong, but they definitely know that the use of they with the singular is illogical. But women are not logical. They are emotional and predatory. We can never become men again unless we tell them so. It's not just the femininnies, it's all women. That's their nature. Acting unnaturally will cause society to collapse.
That women do so well in semantics as to field all the best executive positions where pushing paper and communication among people is so important. They are quite different from the men who excel in areas of Logical/Mathematical Intelligence. the last 10,000 years of evolution warns us that letting women play hard ball in the logical real world is as dangerous as if nations were football teams. Our women's NFL is a bad bet as Hillary showed us in Libya. America better get realistic about the $1 Trillion Dollar Welfare in 2011, the absence of a minuteman citizens army, the one sided disarmament's, the free everything to everybody, and the belief that patriarchs will come around and play fair with them. Single Mothers are now 40% of all families, while the birth rate is evenly split now, 50%-50% between illegitimate births and legitimate. This is all relevant to the Higgs quest as NASA and Science (male endeavors) are being set aside while we even use Russia for Space travel. Venture Capital is funding people and companies in Asia, whike regulations are ham stringing entrepreneurs here.
I sort of agree but have to wonder. The Boson WAS discovered (uh...well..sorta, it's really they just accumulated enough data that they're 'pretty sure' rather than just 'very sure' it's there) I'm reminded of the time when they were first trying to make diamonds and couldn't figure how to generate the enormous pressures needed. They went for years and couldn't get half of what they needed after spending millions, then this one guy came up with a nearly hand operated thingie that could routinely give them 100x what they'd been looking for, for next to nothing. I'm liberal and was really mad at the cons for forbidding stem cell research. Then the scientists just found out that they didn't really even need stem cells. That's the odd thing about progress. If you block it, it just goes around you.
Higgs isn't alone in being detected through statistically accumulated events. Even the nucleus was detected as a statistical accumulation of results from firing many bullets (alpha particles) at gold atoms and noting the statistical distribution of the recorded angles of deflection. There's no choice but to use this approach - especially when looking for high energy entities with rare and fleeting interaction prospects with our current detection tools. And as you have alluded to, even if they had found no Higgs events (signatures) and eliminated the final energy band for Higgs to hide (the Fermilab's Tevatron had already ruled out a large energy region of possibilities), it wouldn't have been a bad thing. Eliminating what probably isn't so is every bit as informative to a theory as "confirming" what probably is. At times, maybe even more so. [There were some physicists that secretly hoped they wouldn't find Higgs since that would present particular difficulties to the current model that they thought to be pregnant with new possibilities.] This is in accord with your premise. Many times failure on one level is merely the crack of light in the door to a deeper one. But we must keep in mind that there is no such thing as 100% certainty in experimental high energy particle physics. Uncertainty rules the universe at the elementary particle level. Furthermore, uncertainty in the accuracy of the detectors themselves must be accounted for - and to a large degree, is surprisingly manageable. Statistical methods can yield amazingly fruitful results when cleverly tested over large numbers of trials. It's how the quantum world reveals itself. And in science, failure is just success in disguise.
