Given that tevatron also sees similar (although weaker) results, the confirmation is beyond doubt. And what an achievement - the first fundamental particle observed since the quarks in the 1980's! An incredible victory for theoretical models developed almost 50 years ago (no wonder Peter Higgs had tears in this eyes)!
Combining the brilliance of the theoreticians with the integrity of experimentalists is what makes science the pinnacle of human achievement (IMO), and makes me proud to be human today.
Well, they are not trying to convince anyone here. They are trying to prove something. So, choosing to hide that data would've been dumb, as the two possible outcomes would have equally interesting I think: proving that the Higgs Boson does exists, or proving that it doesn't.
Beyond that, yeah, it's a good day today for science :) !!!
A nobel prize is at stake! If ATLAS only had the results and not CMS, they would have lost the nobel. For them to put aside personal glory for science is impressive.
And that's the impressive part. Finding this out cost circa $10 billion. To get that dough, they had to convince a lot of politicians (and hundreds of millions of taxpayers) that this was worth it.
To the general public, a clear result is much more satisfying than, "Well, gosh, the data is ambiguous; we need another $10 billion to get some solid answers." It takes a lot of integrity to go to the lengths they did. I salute them!
A minor correction -- the tau neutrino wasn't discovered until 2000.
This is a great comment: "Think about it this way. Let’s say you’re at the target range, and the Lone Ranger is shooting at clay pidgins right nearby. Obviously you’ll want to know if he’s shooting silver bullets, right? But you can’t look at them while they’re still tied up in the gun. You can’t look at them after they’ve hit the pidgin. And they’re traveling too fast to study while they’re in flight. The only way you can see if they’re silver bullets is based on how the pidgin gets blown to pieces."
"The Higgs boson has a very short lifetime outside of other subatomic particles. The only way for us to study them is to smash those particles together and see the results of the decay. Based on how the Higgs decays (blows itself to pieces), we can infer its existence."
This is important because it confirmed the accuracy of the way we conceptualize the structure of the universe.
That means both the people who start and fund projects know that the basis of modern physics is sound. So the time and money won't be wasted by a surprise "nope, Higgs-boson isn't there" in the middle of a project based on the belief that it is.
Unfortunately, the Standard Model still doesn't have a good explanation for how quantum mechanics and gravity work together, so we know it's not complete. But at least the particle menagerie seems to be full :)
The immediate short term won't see any technological advancement, but as with all basic science we will see outcomes in the future.
Science is in fact not engineering.
Of course, this is baseless conjecture and, even if true someday, will be nothing like immediate. However, without understanding the field, we won't be able to affect the field (we may never be able to affect the field when we do understand it).
FYI aethers can be explained mathematically nowadays.
See: http://www.quora.com/Physics/Besides-maturity-of-model-what-...
(the comment oddly doesn't follow my comment??)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_universe
Can we now conclude what'll happen if we go right to the edge of the universe with speed of light? Without any further debates?
God either created the Higgs or he didn't. This science illuminates God. That's all.
It's not an argument for or against creationism.
(Although if you believe God created the world, then just say it. There is nothing wrong with believing that. But don't hide behind a psudo-science like creationism.)
I guess maybe this is a misconception based on the media having come up with the stupid label of "the God particle"?
From what I've gathered this is so expected result that nothing really changes, right now atleast. It'll take a while until something new will come out of this.
As an example this could be summarized like someone showing that P!=NP, it would be totally expected and nothing would really change.
p.s P!=NP would be a bigger result though, the comparison was just for something that is overwhelmingly expected.
So, when I asked him if he believed in Dinosaurs, he said that some fossils were from before the Great Flood, and that those animals where the beasts that died a few thousand years ago.
When I asked him about Carbon-14, and that those fossils were dated millions of years ago, his answer was simple: Two options, those experiments are wrong, or is God testing our faith.
This could be God testing our faith again for them, so... nothing will change.
Did you mean fundamentalist? Orthodox is something totally different.
"I'm about fifty-fifty on believing in God" - Steve Jobs
So, no.
"The cost [...] has been evaluated, taking into account realistic labor prices in different countries. The total cost is X (with a western equivalent value of Y) [where Y>X]
source: LHCb calorimeters : Technical Design Report
ISBN: 9290831693 http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264
about integrity:
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1127343?ln=en
FYI: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Spin_(public_...
