No black hole here, just a Higgs boson
 

MASSive discovery announced!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16158374

Can anyone explain what benefit to mankind this will bring?
I'm not knocking it i just don't understand why knowing how much a particle weighs is such a big deal.

That's because you are confusing "mass" and "weight" which are not the same at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_versus_weight

WOAH, that's like REALLY H-E-A-V-Y M-A-A-N!!!

Perhaps the OP is being, dare I say it, sensationalist?

Just a play on words :) Also looks like the Beeb was sensationalist and it seems they have ammended the page I read a few hours ago!

Right, so they "may" have seen it but, even if so, all it does for the moment is prove that various mathematical descriptions of the universe are correct so far. Don't think we'll be seeing anything practical from this for a while, outside of the willy-waving from the physicists ...

Dave

I thought it was quite a good pun.:)

It was a particle-ly bad pun I thought.

You know you cannot trust these damn scientists. It's almost cetainly a big stitch up between Governments and the scientific community so that they can tax us more:D

I do not keep a locked chest full of Higgs-Boson particles in my loft, Inspector. Honestly I don't, I'm too poor to afford those new-fangled, wotnots ..... :D

Of course despite all the hoo hah,they have not seen the Boson at all, but some indications that might indicate its past presence at that moment. The Boson is purely a name given to an item which would help to complete their mathematics if it does indeed exist. As ever,the whole business is down to theory and they always find an imaginary item if the maths does not add up as a completion of the proof of what they are saying.

They somehow have to justify the billions which where spent building that enormous cyclotron which was done in the main to try to prove the existence of Higg's God Particle!

Les

Les

no i'm not an idiot i was just being facetious.
My statement still stands. How does knowing the mass of this particle benefit mankind?
Anyone?

If we knew that we wouldn't be on Scoobynet! :)

Whilst it's perfectly obvious to me that a comet is a sign of foreboding sent from the Gods, that wànker Aristotle tried to mug us all off a few thousand years back by going on and on about spontaneous combustion of gas in the upper atmosphere and all that! Oh, and Leucippus and Democritus? Twàts! Earth, wind, water and fire are clearly the building blocks - I can see them for goodness sake! Atoms? Don't make me laugh! And apparently, in the '60s, and I know this seems far-fetched, a load of 'scientists' talked about Quacks or Quicks or something! Poppycock! Just a silly name to help explain things we don't understand. Tycho Brahe = :cuckoo:. I see Nicolas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei jumped on the bandwagon, too, with their "ooh, look at us, we think the Earth revolves around the Sun". That Galileo should've been arrested! Big bang? Big bullshít more like! These charlatans will be trying to convince us the Earth's round next with these fancy ideas about 'mathematics' and 'theories'! :Whatever_

I once heard someone, a fool called Charles Dickens I think, say that man evolved from apes and monkeys, I mean how ludicrous is that!! :lol1: If that is so, why do we still have apes and monkeys!!! :lol1:

It's here -------------------------> .

Not sure what the fuss is about.

Does anyone else think science, and physics in particular, is currently a bit of a mess?

Personally I have no idea what they're going on about most of the time, and I think most people are in the same boat.

That c*nt Brian cox does my head in. "We're just a tiny insignificant spec in the wonder of a universe that's ultimately going to return to a vast void of nothingness".

"Your life is utterly pointless... but it's ok: look how beautiful it all is"

Oh right. Well cheers! :D

I know, it's absurd! I think DonNedly makes a good point above; of what possible benefit could all this 'Higgs boson' malarkey be to mankind? I've been scratching my head for hours, and other than helping to explain a question that's plagued humanity since the dawn of time, it's utterly redundant.

I await the "Higgs-Boson Particle Bomb" :Suspiciou

It is quite simply, to get a better understanding of fundamental physics.

Understanding fundamental physics has been vital in the development of computing, medical imaging, space exploration etc for instance, 60 years ago when Dirac was conjecturing about the Dirac sea and antiparticles, he had no idea that today we would have PET scans working on that principle.

In regards the Higgs, it can either tell us that everything we thought about fundamental physics was wrong or they might be able to neutralize the mass effect of inertia and make a 1000 ton spaceship weigh a few kilograms.

There will be some physical technical breakthroughs because of this work, but as with everything in science, it will not come over night, they need to know the science before they find an application for it. If mankind didn't push the boundaries of our knowledge we would still be living in caves

Well, as his band once opined, "things can only get better!" :lol1:

Anyway, Carl Sagan's take:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...83507954918704

Is it me or was Sagan the inspiration for Agent Smith's voice in The Matrix?

I'd be careful if I was you and get some ointment from the docs. Oh, and check your scratching fingers for splinters .... :thumb:

Dave

I think Charles Darwin would have something to say about that!;)

I can appreciate that deepening our understanding of the universe is a very worthwhile pursuit but its the claims that this is the most significant discover in science in the last 60 years that bothers me abit, especially when there is no tangible application for this discovery.
I mean ultimately when they discover its mass won't we be just left with a number. Well great... and...?

Many scientific discoveries did not have practical applications when made but do now. Electricity for example, it had no practical application at all when discovered, it was just scientific curiosity, it transformed the planet by taking us into the second industrial revolution.

It will help explain why all particles have mass and knowing the origin of mass will, for example, allow commercial nuclear fusion, currently believed to be 40 years away because they don't know why W and Z bosons get mass.

So it has every chance of taking us out of the post-industrial revolution, into an all new revolution.

I bet Chuck Norris has seen one! :p

Waste of £6 billion if you ask me........:wonder:

So you are not a fan of the Internet then?

;)

As above.

And we are just a tiny insignificant spec in the wonder of a universe that's ultimately going to return to a vast void of nothingness.
Nothing there we don`t know.

Does EVERYTHING have to have a higher purpose, if so why??