Eek! The Universe Is Going To Collapse! And Its All Higgs Fault!

[LazyGun]

Do not properly understand the math behind this claim at all, but I am making out my will as we speak :)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2523177/Could-universe-collapse-TODAY-Physicists-claim-risk-likely-started.html

Its the TODAY in capital letters from the DMs title that has me worried...

[Colmc54]

The LHC cost a lot of money- I mean a huge amount of money. Therefore the scientists who have built their careers on the back of the LHC are trying to bamboozle their political sponsors in particular and the rest of us as an afterthought with hyperbole and claims of dramatic new discoveries.

I mean, 'The God particle'-seriously! That was a real clue that their claims should be viewed with scepticism.

The truth is that they have found evidence for a new boson in collisions with an energy cross-section iro 125GeV. I have seen diagrams of the various decays involved and they involve the P (proton)P collision producing a 'Higgs boson' which decays in stages down to the everyday particles. I'm no expert as this ain't my branch of science but I've tried to follow the 'particle explosion' over the years. I have to say these diagrams look like those for gluon decay from the previous LEP experiment with a circle with a H in it either right after the PP> or after the PP>gluonx2>.

Frankly I'm not convinced and thus I would say the universe is in less danger than the global taxpayers' money is, given they're already talking about the new collider that will be necessary to allow a 'cleaner' view of what this new exchange particle (boson) is doing or not.

The reason for this is that electrons and their anti-matter partners the positrons annihilate into pure energy as per E=mc2^ whereas the PP collisions are NOT those of a pure fundamental particle and it's antiparticle and are thus messier and harder to analyse. But they knew that from the start surely?
http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/54036
New career opportunities for sure!

[jomifl]

/I mean, 'The God particle'-seriously! That was a real clue that their claims should be viewed with scepticism. /
That was a press invention Colm so indicates nothing..

[jim360]

Harder to analyse, but not impossible. The "God Particle" was a press invention (the preferred name of the Physicist author was, I believe, the "Goddamn Particle" because of how hard it would be to find!). As to this story, it's genuine and important work but of course the Press have pumped it up to a mock doomsday story, when it's really nothing of the sort and is about understanding the current state of physics and searching for the new.

[Colmc54]

Happy new year all!

Just as the scientists say the new boson 'imbues' it's offspring with mass I intend to imbue my brain with the makings of a possible hangover tomorrow. If successful, for a while I might indeed feel that the world was ending!