Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider discover two new supermassive particles

originally posted by: GetHyped
a reply to: Xeven

Just like the discovery of electricity and the electron, eh?

Don't be silly. It's not like these scientist would be working on solving world hunger if they weren't researching in the field if particle physics. Division of labor. What exactly are you doing right no to right the world's wrongs?

Well before posting this I went to Sams club and bought and delivered a bunch of food for Thanks Giving to our local Mission. That's actually true heh.

a reply to: TrueBrit

Xeven was referring to the LHC, Gortex responded with an irrelevant fact about CERN. Diablos was referring to the LHC when he mentioned the developments at CERN.

Tit for tat, but to be clear the LHC was in no way, shape, or form responsible for the development of the Internet or any other technologies in use today that I can think of.

a reply to: Bone75

Now THAT is accurate.

This is a detail oriented subject, and therefore it is important to leave nothing to the imagination in our communications on the matter.

originally posted by: gortex

Woefully inaccurate ?

Actually, yes. It was DARPA that invented and created the technological breakthroughs that made the modern internet possible.

DARPA’s (or ARPA’s) involvement in the creation of the Internet began with an idea to link time-sharing computers into a national system.

If you're interested in educating yourself, also read:

ARPAnet: The first internet


The technology was completely understood and matured by the time CERN developed the World Wide Web. They had a hand in making it widespread, sure, but no fundamental breakthrough came as the result of the work done by CERN and could have easily been done by some other software firm for a fraction, of a fraction, of a fraction of the cost. The internet was not invented as a result of new information gleaned from a deep understanding of electro-weak symmetry breaking, neutrino-oscillation, or lepton physics. To say this is the case is the height of intellectual dishonesty, and is equivalent to saying (or implying at the very least) that superconductors WERE invented by CERN simply because they built and helped mature the technology considerably.

originally posted by: gortex
And you know this how ?
Just because you think it don't make it so.

Not just me, but giants in physics like Sean Carroll:
The law underlying the physics of everyday life are completely understood

Still not convinced? How about a survey of physics professors and what they think about sci-fi technologies becoming science fact?

Futuristic Physicists

In before the expected drivel of, 'oh, those pointy headed scientists once thought the speed of sound was the ultimate speed limit, what do they know?' and the tired quotes of Kelvin and Michelson.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
Uh, no. It is not a ludicrous argument. It is entirely sensible, realistic, and relevant. The venue, and the cost of the materials being used is utterly irrelevant to the subject. It is the science which matters, and scientific apparatus of the scale and sensitivity required to perform these experiments will naturally cost an awful lot of money. In a world where governments world wide spend tens, and sometimes hundreds of billions of dollars on ensuring that their soldiers are better at killing than other soldiers, I think a bit over ten billion dollars for a peek under the skirts of existence is well worth the money! Given that some entities are suggesting that up to 19 TRILLION dollars were lost from real terms household wealth globally during the banking crisis, I think that people who detract from the LHC on the basis of cost have no grounds what so ever to do so. We spend money on far less worthy ventures, all the damned time!

So, your argument essentially boils down to cutting funding for LHC will be used for defense, or an absolutely useless comparison of sums of money?

In academia, funding usually is a zero-sum game. Hence, diverting $10 billion dollars to particle accelerator is taking away from other fields. If that money were spread to more applied fields that actually will yield groundbreaking technologies, such as condensed matter physics, atomic and optical physics, biophysics, and plasma physics, and that's only physics. There a number of other research that could be funded and would have a much large effect on human welfare than anything that could ever possibly come out from particle physics research.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
Actually, your comment above is utter rubbish. The discovery of the Higgs boson could very well lead in decades, or centuries to come, to anti gravity, and mass manipulator based FTL propulsion. You have to understand, that if we can learn to harness the ability to impart or remove mass from regions of space and time, or objects for that matter, then we will be in a position to create warp bubbles, to bend the very fabric of space and time to our own ends. That is EXACTLY the sort of thing, which a better understanding of the Higgs Boson could lead to. It will not happen quickly, and it may be that just as it was sometime between the discovery of the atom, and the first time it was ever split, it will be some time between the discovery of the Higgs Boson, and any potential applications for it coming along.

You're incredibly deluded if you think any of those fanciful things will be coming out of particle physics research. The standard model, as we currently understand it, describes a universe with very amazing precision that does not allow, under any circumstance, anti-gravity, mass-manipulators, and FTL-propulsion. You also seem to be under the misconception that the higgs-boson is responsible for imparting mass. This is, emphatically, not the case, as it is the binding energy of quarks that is responsible for the mass contribution to all baryonic matter. Even if that were the case, that the higgs is actually responsible for all of the mass in matter particles, there is no technologically conceivable way to do anything useful with it seeing as it decays on a timescale that is on the order of 10^-22 seconds.So, the idea that we will ever be able to impart or remove mass from a region of space, which really is a free-energy device and is at complete odds with the standard model, is a fantasy that will continue to remain in science-fiction indefinitely.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
Furthermore, the LHC, to get back to the cost issue for a moment, is a multipurpose experimental apparatus, and is providing data of a quality level and volume, which will render researchers busy with its output for a very long time indeed. The more data produced by an experiment, the better its value. I really think you need to revisit these issues you have with the LHC and what use it's output is to us, because if you have a problem with it, you must be missing something crucial.

This is, actually, true. The statistical analysis methods developed at the LHC, not to mention the software development, is among the best in the world and have widespread applications in many disciplines. The problem I have with this argument is justifying fundamental research with these useful side-applications, when these applications could have easily been developed at 0.01% of the cost associated with the LHC. How about, instead, we just fund the LHC and subsequent projects on the basis that we're just curious about the physics at those length-scales, despite the fact we're well aware that such new physics will never lead to practical devices? You see, if that were the case and most popularizers of science were honest with the public, I fear such projects would never be funded by governments if there wasn't the hidden but completely fanciful notion that such research will lead to the eventual development of the next generation super-weapon.

originally posted by: Bone75
a reply to: TrueBrit

My question wasn't rhetorical. I'd actually like to know.

Do I just have it wrong and they're smashing entire atoms together instead of just protons? And if that's the case, then why do they need more power to smash quarks together?

No, they're smashing protons together. The reason why such collisions can create higgs-bosons, despite the fact that protons have such a smaller mass, is really because the collisions create such high energy densities that allow heavier particles to briefly come into existence before decaying into more stable ones.

As for the needing more power for colliding quarks, this comes from something known as the energy-time uncertainty principle. Basically, to access such small length scales, it can be shown mathematically that one needs greater and greater energies.