Higgs boson discovered

[dpareja]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/03/14/wrd-science-higgs-boson-particle-discovery.html

A new subatomic particle discovered at the world's most powerful particle accelerator is indeed a much sought-after Higgs boson, scientists confirmed Thursday.

"To me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson, though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is," said Joe Incandela, spokesperson for CMS, in a statement. CMS is one of the two experimental efforts at the Large Hadron Collider near the French-Swiss border that have been hunting for the elusive particle.

...

According to the Standard Model of Physics, the prevailing theory explaining the physical laws of nature, the Higgs boson imparts mass to other particles. The Higgs boson, nicknamed "the God particle" is the only particle in the Standard Model of Physics that had never been observed.

However, Higgs bosons also exist in some other models of physics that have been proposed, and it is not yet possible to rule out one of the lightest Higgs bosons that exist in a theory called supersymmetry, said Richard Teuscher, the deputy spokesperson for the Canadian scientists involved in ATLAS. Supersymmetry allows for the existence of multiple Higgs bosons, while the Standard Model allows for only one.

So I'm not a particle physicist, so I ask: Where do we go from here (beyond running more experiments to determine more properties of the particle and see if we can't find another one as supersymmetry or other models allow)?

[MadCatTLX]

[Ranger_Joe]

The particle accelerators are capable of simulating the Big Bang. The fraction of a second after the collision shows us how particles reacted a few fractions of a second after the singularity. Studying these things will allow us to get closer and closer to the moment of truth and possibly, in time, we can see what everything was like prior to the Big Bang.

Look at the LHC as a study on how we got here. It's stunning stuff, but it can hurt your brain a bit.

Look up the Voids in space. Areas of space that are "empty" of normal matter. They are filled with Dark Matter however. Galaxies and Stars and everything all gather in clusters. For example, our neck of the universe is a giant cluster of galaxies that is about 221 million light years across. There are MILLIONS of Super Clusters through the Universe. The size of it all is just almost impossible to accurately think about in your brain.

I love particle physics and the research into space and how the overall status of the Universe affects us here on Earth. It also makes us look incredibly small and insignifigant, which is extremely comforting to me for some reason.

If you want better explanations, watch The Universe or How The Universe Works. The episode on the microscopic universe is mind numbingly baffling, but it's incredibly interesting if you love this shit like I do.

[chitoryu12]

Simply put, the universe is weird. Even things we take for granted as fact, like gravity, still break down and implode if you get to a certain scale. There was one experiment on quantum physics where they set up an electron to go through one of two gates based on its spin. When they sent it through without knowing the spin they put on it, both gates lit up. They literally broke reality with a simple experiment.

No matter how much we know, we will never know it all. Humanity will die out before we come close to understanding the equivalent of a grain of sand in every beach on Earth.

In a sense, that's one of the most brilliant things about the universe: we will never come to a point where we can go "What do we do now?" The answer: keep experimenting. You'll never run out of things to learn.

[Cerim Treascair]

we will never come to a point where we can go "What do we do now?" The answer: keep experimenting. You'll never run out of things to learn.

And this is why I love science.

[The Illusive Man]

So, one step closer to anti-gravity?

[chitoryu12]

So, one step closer to anti-gravity?

Not sure why you say that; the Higgs boson is related to giving mass to fundamental particles and the weak force that leads to radioactive decay. It has nothing to do with gravity.

[chitoryu12]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/universe-age-planck-space-probe-date-big-bang_n_2922818.html

Universe is now estimated at 13.8 billion years old, 80 million years older than we thought.

Creationists expected to be going into even further conniptions in the comments section and declaring it all a plot by dogmatic atheist scientists.

[Jack Mann]

But Chit, don't you see?  The scientists are changing their theories!  That means they're clearly making it all up.  Not like the Bible, which never changes no matter what the evidence.