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ATLAS Collaboration / CERN
A computer graphic shows a cross-section of the particle tracks generated on Sunday by one of the last proton collisions in the Large Hadron Collider's ATLAS detector before it was shut down for the switchover to lead-ion collisions.
The Large Hadron Collider has been turned off for a scheduled switchover, but researchers are continuing their quest at Europe's CERN particle-physics center to unravel some of the world's top scientific mysteries — including whether or not the Higgs boson really exists, and whether or not neutrinos can really travel faster than light.
In a news release, CERN declared that the world's most powerful particle collider largely surpassed its observational objectives "for the second year running." The metric for success is known as the inverse femtobarn, which is equal to about 70 trillion particle collisions. At the beginning of this year's run, the LHC's goal was to produce 1 inverse femtobarn during 2011, but instead it delivered almost six inverse femtobarns to each of the two main detectors, ATLAS and CMS. In comparison, Fermilab produced 10 inverse femtobarns in the course of a decade.
"At the end of this year's proton running, the LHC is reaching cruising speed," Steve Myers, CERN's director for accelerators and technology, said in today's news release.
Where's the Higgs hiding?
So far, researchers at the LHC have ruled out wide swaths of the energy spectrum as potential hiding places for the Higgs boson, the so-called "God particle" that is the last big missing piece in the Standard Model of particle physics. Detection of the Higgs would be the biggest prize in the particle hunt. But if the Higgs doesn't match physicists' expectations, they might have to try a whole new approach for solving the subatomic puzzle. (And some of them are actually looking forward to that prospect.)
Nature News quotes University of Padua physicist Tommaso Dorigo, a member of the CMS team, as saying he's "willing to bet a few bucks" that the Higgs is lurking around the energy level of 120 billion electron volts, one of the regions that hasn't yet been ruled out. Other physicists have said they'll have enough data by the end of next year to determine whether or not the Standard Model Higgs exists. Some have even suggested they'll know by Christmas, based on an analysis of the data already gathered.
On that score, CMS spokesperson Guido Tonelli dangled an intriguing teaser in today's release: "As we speak, hundreds of young scientists are still analyzing the huge amount of data accumulated so far; we'll soon have new results and, maybe, something important to say on the Standard Model Higgs Boson."
Little big bangs ahead
While the data-crunchers huddle over the numbers, the collider itself is being prepared for four weeks' worth of lead-ion collisions. Such heavy-ion smash-ups are aimed at re-creating the conditions that existed just an instant after the big bang, when the whole universe is thought to have consisted of a primordial soup known as quark-gluon plasma.
During previous lead-ion runs, researchers were able to produce small dollops of the soup, but this time around, they want to probe internal structure of the ions in greater detail. To do that, they'll experiment with smashing protons and lead ions together, which sounds a bit like the Reese's peanut-butter cup of particle physics. ("You got your protons in my lead ions!")
"Smashing lead ions together allows us to produce and study tiny pieces of primordial soup, but as any cook will tell you, to understand a recipe fully, it's vital to understand the ingredients," said Paolo Giubellino, spokesperson for the ALICE ion-smashing experiment, "and in the case of quark-gluon plasma, this is what proton-lead ion collisions will bring."
About those neutrinos...
The faster-than-light neutrino study involves a different research collaboration that uses facilities at CERN on the French-Swiss border, as well as at Italy's Gran Sasso underground observatory, more than 450 miles away. The physicists behind the OPERA experiment created a worldwide stir in September when they announced that they clocked bunches of neutrinos traveling from CERN to Gran Sasso at a speed beyond what was thought to be the cosmic speed limit.
OPERA's collaborators called upon the physics community to help them understand how this could have happened, or where they went wrong, and since then they've gotten lots of suggestions. Scores of papers have been submitted to the ArXiv.org preprint website, proposing possible explanations as well as potential flaws in the experiment. One concern has been that the experiment didn't account properly for relativistic effects such as gravitational time dilation. Another concern is that the pulses of neutrinos were so long that it'd be easy to mismeasure the travel time.
Now the BBC has picked up on reports that the OPERA experiment will be rerun, this time with short bursts of neutrinos rather than a long pulse. The BBC quoted CERN's director of research, Sergio Bertolucci, as saying that "this will allow OPERA to repeat the measurement, removing some of the possible systematics."
Rutgers physicist Matt Strassler, who was among those concerned about the length of the neutrino pulses, said in a blog post that rerunning the experiment with shorter pulses was the "obvious thing to do."
"It's like sending a series of loud and isolated clicks instead of a long blast on a horn; in the latter case you have to figure out exactly when the horn starts and stops, but in the former you just hear each click and then it's already over," he wrote.
Strassler quoted Japanese physicist Mitsuhiro Nkamura as saying the cross-check could be completed in just a few weeks. "So this is very good news," Strassler said. Stay tuned for another dose of weirdness ... or a dose of reality.
More about the frontiers of physics:
- Nobel physics prize highlights puzzles
- Neutrinos spark wild scientific leaps
- Interactive: Putting Einstein to the test
- Special report: All about the big bang machine
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
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I hope the shorter pulses will reduce the discrepancy proportionally but remain on the positive side, then we got something folks.
There is also the risk that if they shorten the pulses too much there will be a false reading of the peak (deviation will be too short compared to the pulse and lose accuracy).
This is science on the bleeding edge. No one has ever done this before and they are making up the procedures as they go along. Expect some fits and starts. Go get that knowledge, scientists! GO GO GO
After this they should take a break, maybe go on a cruise. The bosons and neutrinos will still be there when they get back.
Sounds like they've been hitting the Big Bong.
LMFAO!! That explains it all!!
"Duuude! I got this really killer idea the other night! So, check this out... and then we apply for a multi billion dollar grant to build it. Cool, hunh?"
What? No black holes yet?
It would be a good thing if they can achieve micro black holes, which live long enough for us to study. Being singularities, black holes could lead us to better understand infinities in the physics.
It would be nice if they could produce concrete evidence that black holes exist, or can exist, in nature. Right now they're just a mathmatical possibility combined with observational data. No hard data on their existence has been gathered.
David1 - Are you contradicting yourself? Isn't observational data the hardest data that you can get?
They need to take a picture of a black hole. Of course, you won't be able to see it, but you'll be able to see that it's not there.
They have, many in fact. The most famous is Sagitarius A, the Milky Way's supermassive blackhole at the center of our galaxy.
david hard evidence and direct observation of black holes is already there, black holes are fact not theory.
For many, many years we have observed direct evidence. Lots of direct evidence. Direct as could be possible. I don't know what more direct evidence you could possibly want.
To be specific about the evidence, the movements of stars very close to the galactic center has been carefully tracked and they are clearly observed to be orbiting extremely quickly, in tightly looping, rather "cometary looking" orbits around a relatively small region of space in which nothing can be seen. Voila! A black hole is there. It exists. Case closed.
Perfect example of science at its best. Willing to admit they were wrong. Asking for more evidence. Willing to change their minds if presented with different evidence.
Beats the hell out of faith.
About the neutrinos: if they rerun the experiment using shorter bursts of neutrinos rather than one long one, are they really "rerunning" the experiment, or are they conducting a different one? I understand the concerns about discrepancies arising from the burst length. However, wouldn't it make more sense to do the exact same thing with the exact same variables, rather than change variables (after one experiment!) to chase an answer that they think is more believable? I'm not saying that they shouldn't do the experiment with shorter pulses, just that with a result like this (superluminal neutrinos), maybe they should do the same thing again before messing with the conditions of the experiment.
Also, I didn't realize that they didn't account for time dilation. That's honestly the first explanation my mind jumped to when I initially heard the story.
Well, the OPERA folks say the experiment incorporates the effects of time dilation, but folks will be arguing over those 60 nanoseconds for years. The short-burst experiment is structured differently, but it sounds as if they're trying to respond to something that other folks have pointed out as a potential pitfall. I forgot to mention that Fermilab et al. will be checking similar neutrino travel times that have been recorded as part of the MINOS experiment.
I really wish journalists would refrain from using expressions like "God Particle", "mitochondrial Eve", "Y-chromosomal Adam" it only serves to confuse the simple-minded.
Well, it serves as shorthand for folks who tune in only infrequently. I try not to overuse the God Particle reference (or mitochondrial Eve). As long as we're talking buzzwords, I've been known to use "holy grail" on occasion, but I'm extra careful with "missing link" because that term does have a polemical impact.
I'm normally an optimistic science buff. Although, the other day I realized.. that even if science explains HOW the universe was created, in every detail. We will never be able to explain WHY .. it was created. No being that has been created by the universe itself will never know that answer, unless.. the entity that created it, if there is such a thing, comes forth and explains that reason to a living being. So far.. nobody is showing up and telling us anything.. and they may never.
IMO you seek the answer for a question like "Why is the ratio of the circumfrence of a circle to it's diameter equal to 3.14159?" "Why was the Universe created?" as if there was some intent behind it when such need not be the case. Not everything is part of some grand scheme or so it seems to me. Trying to fit a "designer" into things only complicates things and and would raise more questions than it answers.
Cave...not to appear simplistic but the fact that we ask "why' is a good indicator to me that there's a reason for existence. It also seems that we're meant to understand the riddle of life and the universe from our own innate abilities.
Questions are by-products of our minds, whose function is to gather and organize observations in order to more efficiently direct our behavior. Humans have achieved such specialization that some of us intentionally pursue questions as an avocation or vocation, and those people actually train their minds in a discipline, in order to answer questions, or continue asking them. The Universe has no such intention, and no such training, and no use for them; otherwise it would not be The Universe, it would just be one of the turtles on the way down.
I loved your post Dave, Awesome! Cave..I have to ask, Why does there need to be a reason, there could be no reason other then it happened. I am not saying that there isnt a reason but when one asks Why was the Universe created it puts forth the suggestion that a higher being had a hand, I am agnostic so I dont discount the possability of a "God" but it could all have just been a result of nature happening with no reason other then it just happened to unfold as it did.
That doesnt mean Humanity wont have a future and a goal to reach, one day we will be so evolved and have such understanding that our species will not be like it is today, that is of course if we dont kill ourselves and our planets ability to support life.
We *are* the Universe, not something separate from it (unless you are an advocate for existence of an "eternal soul." But even then...). Thus the Universe strives to understand itself.
We are a part of the Universe, but not all of it. We are the part which strives to understand itself, and to understand other parts.
To posters like these, I like to illustrate the following metaphor:
Science is a pool, about Olympic size, with some stairs going down into the water on the shallow end.
Humans are a child going swimming for the first time.
So far, the child has barely dipped her toes into the water. This is humanity's progress on science, most of which has been accomplished in the last 300-400 years.
With science, patience is paramount, and we won't get all the answers we seek (probably none) during our lifetime, but we have to make progress. Keep plodding away, Good Scientists!
Dave,
"WHY?"
Excellent question! While it is the simplest of all questions in the Universe to ask, it is also the most difficult to answer. To many thinkers (scientists) it is the "Holy Grail" of information and even the great among us like Dr Hawking cannot resist answering before his days are done. Not too long ago Dr Hawking gave his approval and strong belief that the M-Theory is valid. The M-Theory answers the question why with the idea that nothingness is real and can create everything.
Although I disagree with Dr Hawking's opinion on the M-Theory I respect him for giving us the inspiration to continue our search for the answers.
I am leaning towards "universal intelligence" will one day answer the question why along with all the other questions we have yet no answers to. If you think Nature as information, since our universe behaves with a set of physical laws then it only stand to reason we can reach the zenith by deciphering more and more information about our universe. Intelligence is the product (effect) of information (cause), whether it is forming ideas in our complex brain our the free energy forming our complex universe.
So if one continues with this postulate, then if we continue gathering more and more information it will make us more and more intelligent and maybe one glorious day in our future (assuming our idiot politicians have not finished us off) we will reach an ability to understand and visualize in our minds our Creator of Everything. And I believe only the Creator has the answer to the why and is keeping it to Himself. Why won't He?
Well, I think I would remember having worked on something as big as the Universe.
But you said we would wake up and choose another life. I think I would remember having chosen this life.
bush
I think we're extemely mortal, and the best we can hope for is to die in our sleep.
Asking why and how it could have been created is based on the bias of linear time. When you consider that there was no time before the big bang and that the origin could as easily be far into the future as we assume it is in the past since time is only another variable in the puzzle.
Once you no longer assume a linear time construct and think of space as warped and not distance as we observe it, the question of why and who created it aren't as relevant. There was no when and there was no where for an origin. It's more of a complex circle of everything folding in upon itself. Einstein's statement of everything happening all at once being prevented by time seems to be more true than we ever realized.
While you two are on this subject, if you haven't read the short story "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov, you should check it out (I love pushing this story).
Linky-link
Bush democrat - the 2nd law of thermodynamics applies only to systems isolated from outside influence. So, with regard to the universe as a whole it would seem to apply and if you could monitor it long enough you would see energy dissipating until energy could no longer be observed at all ( many billions of years from now).
Entropy does not apply to the Earth (for the time being) as a system because there is a constant input of energy from the sun which keeps things moving, reacting and keeps the Earth from descending into a state of thermodynamic equilibrium.
Does that satisfy your query?
Bush dem - I just read your question about living in an artificial universe. I would just have to ask, Do you have any compelling reason to believe such? Is this something that could be verified by observations and experiments? Any observations or experiments that did so, would also need to be independently verified.
Its an interesting idea for fiction, but I don't think there is anything that might lead to such a conclusion.
Alan, I hate to this say, but your continued and needless usage of religious terms in a science article is disgusting and makes me want to puke.
The term "God particle" is inherently leading and apparently driven by passion. It should never have been considered. Of course once one becomes physically aware of its (Higgs?) origin it should make no real difference to an objective mind whatever its called.
Wow, after these comments I think I'll have to retire the "God Particle" label. I guess by now people know enough about the Higgs boson's significance that there's no need to use it. But I will caution you that you still might see religious/spiritual terms in this space every so often. That's why it's called Cosmic Log instead of Science Log. If you have to puke, try not to get anything on me. ;-)
Science evolves. The world used to be flat. Thermodynamics was a lark. There was no evolution. Planes couldn't EVER break the speed of sound. Man would never run faster than a 10 second 100 or a sub 4 minute mile. There was math to prove almost all of what I listed, but that math was wrong. Predictions made by a German who didn't even play Sonic the Hedgehog will prove to be false as our understanding grows. That is a good thing.
Now how will the world handle the FTL particles/info? And how will that be exploited, and what are those ramifications on reality? Probably far less than theoretical physicists have dreamt.
I suspect that the Higgs Boson will have a similar fate as mathematical constants that were put in to make the math work out very nice, then discovered later to be insufficient, at best an estimation, or at worst totally incorrect (I'm looking at you, Cosmological Constant!).
All this falldarol about other demensions, little fellows and so on. "Your big words are hurting my head". Can't we just do something fun for a change? e.g. make up a bunch of stuff and put it on the internet. "what is truth, what is reality"? (i'm just sayin). Also, just to let you know, Higgs is here with me.
All this falldarol about other demensions, little fellows and so on. "Your big words are hurting my head". Can't we just do something fun for a change? e.g. make up a bunch of stuff and put it on the internet. "what is truth, what is reality"? (i'm just sayin). Also, just to let you know, Higgs is here with me.
commenting on the previously commented comments. Try not to forget what Dennis O' Van commented, i.e. "where'd everybody go"?
Why are we here? Science helps us to understand our place in the universe, but offers no evidence of intelligent design.
Dark matter, dark energy, and what happens inside of a black hole--seem to complicate things, but perhaps they hold the key to unraveling the mystery. Consider the following:
Dark matter -> gravity -> contraction (yin energy)
Dark energy -> anti-gravity -> expansion (yang energy)
Baryonic (visible) matter disappears into black holes, never to be seen again. What happens to it? Perhaps the enormous centrifugal forces separate baryonic matter into its subatomic constituents--dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter is flung back into the galaxy where its gravitational forces combine to bind galaxies and galaxy clusters together, while dark energy is released into deep space along the galactic axis, where it can fully expand, pushing distant galaxies farther apart.
The powerful bond between dark matter and dark energy is stable until entering a black hole. Where could this unlikely bond have formed? The Big Bang.
If all baryonic matter, including us, is made up of these bonds, it would explain the dual nature of man. Part of us wants to belong and connect with others (yin). Part of us wants to be free, to expand (yang). This inner conflict is the cause of all our problems: love and hate, peace and war, good and evil--and they are all relative to the observer. After all, Hitler didn't believe he was evil; he thought everybody else was.
If this were true, and we could accept this truth, maybe the world would make sense and we could learn to solve our problems using logic instead of emotions.
In that case, we have no problems, all our behavior and experiences are just manifestations of the physical processes, determined more or less inevitably. No solutions necessary. :D
VR, is that virtual reality?
Ok, well it seems to me that if you can call something virtual reality, then in fact it is a portion of the Universe, which might seem like all of reality to someone who can't see beyond the boundary of that portion. If this is a way for someone to try to bridge religion with science, that's fine, but I don't think I can make any use of it.
van helsing's statement about yin and yang seemed to me like another way of wording Freud's dual-drive idea that we organisms are subject to the same forces of attraction and repulsion, binding and separating, which we assume for everything in the Universe, so that our strife and emotions, and love and hate and war and peace are just as inevitable as nuclear reactions in the Sun. I do make use of that idea, so I was kind of teasing that Hitler, etc. are not actually problems, but just more process.
van helsing,
No evidence of intelligent design? How do you explain us? How do you explain our ability to have deciphered quite a bit of the natural phenomena in such a short period of time?
The fact that the universe is behaving to a well defined set of laws is evidence of intelligence. If our time started in chaos, Big Gang, the formless state of our manifold, how do you explain the orderly progress of the universe? I will argue that there remains a great deal of chaos, possibly dark matter and dark energy (free energy) may fall in this classification of formless states, in our evolving manifold (we are living in positive time) and as more and more of free energy interacts with baryonic matter (dark and visible, "us") the complex structure of information, intelligence, grows.
So I ask how can this happen without a blueprint? If order is a consequence of positive time (evolution) then I believe there are adjacent manifolds to which ours is replicating. I would also conjecture that the Big Bang was an exothermic release of free energy from an adjacent manifold spreading not just its energy but also its DNA.
Ad'm - Since you mentioned adjacent manifolds, then is it safe to assume that you agree with notion of a higher dimensionally multiverse? If that is the case, then the flow of energy from one manifold to another could be problematic because the combination of opened dimensions could be different. Meaning, just because there is energy in one manifold does not mean that the sending manifold's energy can even exist in a different dimensional combination of the receiving manifold. The more difficult question is how can we determine the existence of another manifold outside of the boundary of our universe?
With positive time, has anyone ever seen negative time in a dynamic system? Does negative time even exist? And why is there a need for a blueprint?
Meanwhile the world still starves, and dies of cancer...
And our reproductive process continues, and we are 7 billion...
and people like tuned still don't realize how worthless their opinion really is.
If we had all the answers life would not be interesting, so therefore I think that is the way it is supposed to be. We have a sense for exploration and discovery which occurrs with growth and keeps our small part of the universe interesting. We have an eye for beauty which varies with each of us. If all the peices of the puzzle were the same that would not be a puzzle at all. We have accepted theories as fact because they best describe what we see or understand now until someone comes with a new theory which better describes it today. What our scientists theorize is definitely intriguing. I think we should be very careful with the lead-ion collisions, we might indeed create a black hole. Maybe the black holes we theorize about are from other intelligent life experimenting with similar types of technology. It is fun to theorize even if your not a Harvard Graduate, I'm sure it was done even before the University of Bologna was founded. Does the universe have an end to it or is that as far as we can see for now¿? We live in a world with floors, walls, ceilings and lifespans. We have a term for what we cannot comprehend --- Infinity. How many universes are there? I believe in GOD. I believe that GOD has provided along with us an inexhaustable environment that we have to grow as it grows and find new ways of sustaining our lives. We must learn to survive in any of the realms that are available to us. What if GOD Were One of US? Maybe GOD wants company.
Great
Omnidimensional
Dad
http://www.technologyreview.in/blog/arxiv/27260/
Faster-than-Light Neutrino Puzzle Claimed Solved by Special Relativity
The relativistic motion of clocks on board GPS satellites exactly accounts for the superluminal effect, says physicist.
However, you would even more surprised to know that there is no STR at all, there is just Doppler Effect!
Anadish,
Convincing argument by R van Elburg, even with the 64 ns correction it still puts the speed of a massive lepton at the speed of light. This correction does not eliminate the main issue, massive particle should not travel at the speed of light.
My hope is that even with van Elburg correction the muon neutrinos do travel at c =/- normal variance and even more important that if there is sufficient oscillations to tau neutrinos that the variance in the speed would be longer. I hope they repeat this experiment until all the questions on the relevant parameters are answered.
I would like to know the variances of the electon, muon and tau neutrinos compare to the photon.
Higgs Particle?
YOK!
Update Concepts-Comprehension…
Evolution Is The Quantum Mechanics Of Natural Selection.
The quantum mechanics of every process is its evolution.
Quantum mechanics are mechanisms, possible or probable or actual mechanisms of natural selection.
=================
Universe-Energy-Mass-Life Compilation
http://universe-life.com/2012/02/03/universe-energy-mass-life-compilation/
A. The Universe
From the Big-Bang it is a rationally commonsensical conjecture that the gravitons, the smallest base primal particles of the universe, must be both mass and energy, i.e. inert mass yet in motion even at the briefest fraction of a second of the pre Big Bang singularity. This is rationally commonsensical since otherwise the Big would not have Banged, the superposition of mass and energy would not have been resolved.
The universe originates, derives and evolves from this energy-mass dualism which is possible and probable due to the small size of the gravitons.
Since gravitation Is the propensity of energy reconversion to mass and energy is mass in motion, gravity is the force exerted between mass formats.
All the matter of the universe is a progeny of the gravitons evolutions, of the natural selection of mass, of some of the mass formats attaining temporary augmented energy constraint in their successive generations, with energy drained from other mass formats, to temporarily postpone, survive, the reversion of their own constitutional mass to the pool of cosmic energy fueling the galactic clusters expansion set in motion by the Big Bang.
B. Earth Life
Earth Life is just another mass format. A self-replicating mass format. Self-replication is its mode of evolution, natural selection. Its smallest base primal units are the RNAs genes.
The genesis of RNAs genes, life's primal organisms, is rationally commonsensical thus highly probable, the "naturally-selected" RNA nucleotides. Life began/evolved on Earth with the natural selection of inanimate RNA, then of some RNA nucleotides, then arriving at the ultimate mode of natural selection, self-replication.
C. Know Thyself. Life Is Simpler Than We Are Told
The origin-reason and the purpose-fate of life are mechanistic, ethically and practically valueless. Life is the cheapest commodity on Earth.
As Life is just another mass format, due to the oneness of the universe it is commonsensical that natural selection is ubiquitous for ALL mass formats and that life, self-replication, is its extension. And it is commonsensical, too, that evolutions, broken symmetry scenarios, are ubiquitous in all processes in all disciplines and that these evolutions are the "quantum mechanics" of the processes.
Human life is just one of many nature's routes for the natural survival of RNAs, the base primal Earth organisms.
Life's evolution, self-replication:
Genes (organisms) to genomes (organisms) to mono-cellular to multicellular organisms:
Individual mono-cells to cooperative mono-cells communities, "cultures".
Mono-cells cultures to neural systems, then to nerved multicellular organisms.
Human life is just one of many nature's routes for the natural survival of RNAs, the base Earth organism.
It is up to humans themselves to elect the purpose and format of their life as individuals and as group-members.
Dov Henis (comments from 22nd century)
An Embarrassingly Obvious Theory Of Everything
http://universe-life.com/2011/12/10/eotoe-embarrassingly-obvious-theory-of-everything/
http://universe-life.com/2011/12/13/21st-century-science-whence-and-whither/