He looks like he does Shakespeare-in-the-Park when he's not ripping the fabric space-time and opening wormholes.

I only see a picture of the reactor...

Did they change the photo?

What most people call mad scientists are, in fact, mad engineers. They are only concerned with building the biggest, baddest weapon out there. You rarely hear about mad control groups, mad reproducibility or mad peer-reviewed journals.

SnarfVader: Quantumbunny: I only see a picture of the reactor...

Did they change the photo?

Scroll down. It's on the right side of the article.

Only seeing the reactor pic.
/fonefarking

Sybarite: RexTalionis: Yes, he is a wizard.
/Dude looks like Gandalf.

Oh crap, does that mean technology is now sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic?

Consider this: During the recent "faster than light neutrinos" thing, the team was sending particles smaller than atoms - of which there are billions upon billions occurring naturally everywhere around us - ~750 kilometers underground to a detector, and were telling us that not only were these particular neutrinos detected, but that they were supposedly arriving 60 billionths of a second earlier than they should.

It's looking like that in this case that wasn't really happening, but still, just the idea that someone could legitimately make the claim that they were doing this....it's not magic but it might as well be.

The LHC webcam is always interesting when they're running the thing.

I'm going to regret asking this in a Fark thread, but I have a question for my fellow nerds:

The article states that researchers are looking for the Higgs Boson in the range of "120 to 125 GeV (gigelectronvolts), where one GeV is about the mass of a proton."

But protons have mass, right? So how can they find the particle that causes things to have mass at a range higher than the mass it is giving?

SnarfVader: Quantumbunny: I only see a picture of the reactor...

Did they change the photo?

Scroll down. It's on the right side of the article.

I see Putin, and I see a video thing for Charleze Theron... The only article picture is the reactor...

SnarfVader: Boatmech: SnarfVader: Quantumbunny: I only see a picture of the reactor...

Did they change the photo?

Scroll down. It's on the right side of the article.

Only seeing the reactor pic.
/fonefarking

Do you have videos blocked? The pic Subby is referring to is actually a video.

/Not subby.

And there it is... Was blocked because it was on bbci.co.uk instead of being on their bbcimg.co.uk.

Thanks, I was blocking that.

They were even more excited last week when they caught a glimpse of Higg's bosom.

Fascinating. Yet another "omen" of the shift of science from the US to elsewhere.

It's been a good ride. I'll see you all in hell after the planet explodes next week

/Mayans missed it by three weeks
//rounding error

imontheinternet: /Mayans missed it by three weeks
//rounding error

And a year apparently. The Mayan apocalypse is 2012... you know, like the movie.

kieran57: I'm going to regret asking this in a Fark thread, but I have a question for my fellow nerds:

The article states that researchers are looking for the Higgs Boson in the range of "120 to 125 GeV (gigelectronvolts), where one GeV is about the mass of a proton."

But protons have mass, right? So how can they find the particle that causes things to have mass at a range higher than the mass it is giving?
One GeV is the mass of "a stationary proton." The protons in LHC have been accelerated up to near light speed, and that additional energy gets them up to 7000 GeV each. (E=mc^2 and all.) There are 14TeV total in the collision, which gets disipated, The Higgs would be a 120-125GeV chunk if the hypothesesis are correct.
http://journal.batard.info/post/2008/09/12/lhc-how-fast-do-these-prot o ns-go

Spindle: imontheinternet: /Mayans missed it by three weeks
//rounding error

And a year apparently. The Mayan apocalypse is 2012... you know, like the movie.

Wait- what year will it be 4 weeks from now? Did I travel back in time again?

SnarfVader: stevetherobot: They were even more excited last week when they caught a glimpse of Higg's bosom.

What a Higginn's bosom may look like:

[i212.photobucket.com image 275x379]

I like this better.

Quantumbunny: I only see a picture of the reactor...

Did they change the photo?

If you have scripts blocked, you need to enable bbci.co.uk to see the wizard.

kieran57: But protons have mass, right? So how can they find the particle that causes things to have mass at a range higher than the mass it is giving?

I'm sure someone else can explain it better, but in quantum physics there's a concept that real particles are surrounded by a sea of virtual particles that "borrow" a bit of energy for a very short time in order to come into existence. They pop in, do their thing, and then disappear before the cosmic accountants notice them.

This is how you'd normally encounter a Higgs, or a W boson involved in a radioactive decay. However, if you supply enough energy (e.g. in a collision) then it's possible for one of these virtual particles to become "real" and to go flying off on its own.

Spindle: imontheinternet: /Mayans missed it by three weeks
//rounding error

And a year apparently. The Mayan apocalypse is 2012... you know, like the movie.

And they didn't predict the apocalypse in 2012, they just stopped making calendars for years after 2012.

error 303: The LHC webcam is always interesting when they're running the thing.

I'm scared...

+1 for the headline coming in two minutes.

By now, you've all heard my FermiLab / Higgs Bison joke. Right? So there's no reason to trot it out again, is there?

OK then, carry on.

So what I got from that article is that they may have possibly maybe not found it next week? Thanks. That's helpful.

Everything's better when Morgan Freeman explains it. BONUS: you get to see Peter Higgs! Fun starts around 25:00.

Scientific American is reporting that both groups have seen hints of the Higgs at around 125 GeV

Very exciting stuff :D

What about the Curtis-Heinekin particle?

In my opinion, the most important question is this:

What does Sheldon Cooper think about it?

aearra: Fascinating. Yet another "omen" of the shift of science from the US to elsewhere.

Ja, du musst für physics Deutsche sprechen jetzt.

//Not a repeat of WWII

mongbiohazard: Spindle: imontheinternet: /Mayans missed it by three weeks
//rounding error

And a year apparently. The Mayan apocalypse is 2012... you know, like the movie.

And they didn't predict the apocalypse in 2012, they just stopped making calendars for years after 2012.

Kind of like the software engineers of the 70's but planned out a few years further

The Large Hadron Collider is giving me a large hardon ... and so is Higg's bosom.

/nerd

Random thought I had while watching that "Through the Wormhole" that nandaiyo linked.

If I recall correctly, the theory of the universe is that it's increasing in speed as it expands...would the existence of Higgs Boson explain why it's actually getting faster instead of slowing down? Like...*scratches head* a limit on the amount of it in the universe, so the more matter in existence the less tightly it's being held together.

LograyX: the theory of the universe is that it's increasing in speed as it expands...

This isn't a theory, it's an observation (we see distant objects moving away from us faster than nearby objects- in fact, it's so reliable that we can measure the distance to an object by how fast it's moving away from us), and it's not actually about speed. It's a little confusing, because in daily life, if something is moving away from us, it has a velocity pointing away from us. The distance increases because its speed takes it farther away from us.

When we're talking about distant galaxies, though, that doesn't hold true. Their velocity relative to is pretty irrelevant- they're not moving much- but the distance is increasing anyway. That's because space itself is expanding, And the rate of that expansion is increasing.

There's no reason to think the Higgs is involved. As for the amount of matter, we'd expect to see the opposite relationship- the more mass in the universe, the more tightly we'd expect it to be held together (due to gravity).

LograyX: Random thought I had while watching that "Through the Wormhole" that nandaiyo linked.

If I recall correctly, the theory of the universe is that it's increasing in speed as it expands...would the existence of Higgs Boson explain why it's actually getting faster instead of slowing down? Like...*scratches head* a limit on the amount of it in the universe, so the more matter in existence the less tightly it's being held together.

I don't think so. The Higgs Boson isn't the easiest concept to understand, but I do know that the amount of matter in the universe doesn't change all that much. In fact if anything we should be having a net loss of matter as more and more is converted into energy.

The Expansion of the universe is a concept called "Dark Energy" which is a nice way of saying we have no clue what it actually is. Most I've theories deal with empty space having a very slight repulsive effect. What causes this effect varies, but I've never seen it attributed to the Higgs.