humanino said:Higgs' hypothesis (so far, this is just an hypothesis) is beautiful. It is elegant, appealing, etc... because it allows to rescue symmetries that are not observed in nature, but that still pertains to physical laws. The purpose of the Higgs boson is unification. We would like it to occur.
But we don't NEED it. We can deal without it. As long as its mere existence is not established, we should not care wether it is real or not. Only experiment can tell. Therefore, I would suggest not to use such "name" as "God particle", which is rather ridiculous for a scientist (don't you agree?). I do not expect physicist to quit their jobs if the Higgs boson does not show up at LHC.
Besides, the Higgs mechanism is far more general than that. It is actually used here and there, in various models to generates particles from the breaking of a particular symmetry. In this case, we have effective theory describing effectively particular situation. But this is already enough to justify the study of Higgs mechanism by itself, with or without the Higgs fundamental particle of the standard model.
I don't really understand the link with ultra-high energy protons in cosmic rays, "Oh my God"-particle as they put it.
John Marburger, the current embattled science advisor to George Bush, even said that the Higgs mechanism came in from the back door from condensed matter into particle physics.
you can also say that the young physicists can partly benefit from this because new ideas should be put to the drawing boards, but the older physicists will be much more disappointed than the youngsters (or so i think).Haelfix said:It will be one of the biggest mistakes in the history of science, and an immense back to the drawing boards vibe.
Haelfix said:if we didn't discover the Higgs [...] postulate that it was simply at higher energy, and we couldn't see it at LHC, rather than assume its nonexistance.
humanino said:There is un upper bound on the Higgs mass around 130 to 190 GeV, from constraints on the scale at which the coupling to the Higgs blows up. (I just quote PDG 2002)
I thought LHC will be able to reach this !?
The Oh-My-God Particle, also known as the ultra-high-energy cosmic ray, is an extremely high-energy particle that was discovered in 1991 by scientists at the University of Utah. It is believed to be the most energetic particle ever detected in the universe.
The Oh-My-God Particle was discovered using a series of detectors that were designed to measure cosmic rays. The particle was detected by these detectors as it entered the Earth's atmosphere at an incredibly high energy level.
The Oh-My-God Particle is significant because it provides evidence for the existence of extremely high-energy cosmic rays, which are a mystery to scientists. It also helps to confirm the existence of the Higgs boson, a fundamental particle that plays a crucial role in the Standard Model of particle physics.
The Oh-My-God Particle is believed to be a proton that has been accelerated to a speed close to the speed of light. This acceleration is thought to be caused by the interaction between the proton and the Higgs field, which is created by the Higgs boson. This interaction gives the proton its incredible energy level.
The discovery of the Oh-My-God Particle has opened up new possibilities for studying high-energy cosmic rays and the Higgs boson. It also provides valuable information about the origins and composition of the universe. Further research on the Oh-My-God Particle could lead to a better understanding of the fundamental forces and particles that make up our universe.