PBS Newshour just now here tape of an interview with Ian Sample .. this looks the one ..
What exactly is the Higgs boson, and why is its discovery so fundamental to understanding particle physics? Author and Guardian science correspondent Ian Sample has the details.
RAY SUAREZ: To help us further grasp today's news and exactly what a Higgs boson is, we're joined by Ian Sample, science correspondent for The Guardian newspaper and author of a book about the Higgs boson called "Massive: The Hunt for the God Particle." He was at the press conference today in Geneva, and joins us now from London.
And, Ian, it's rare to see such genuine widespread excitement from a physics discovery. Do we know something important about the way the world works that we didn't a week ago?
IAN SAMPLE, The Guardian: Exactly right.
This was rock star stuff at CERN today. I have never seen cheering like it, apart from at a football match. And what we know today that we didn't know yesterday and we haven't known since it was proposed 48 years ago is that there's an energy field in the space all around us.
It goes through us. It's everywhere you can think of. And that field does something absolutely fundamental, which is it gives mass or weight to the smallest particles that make you and me up, everything else you can think of, any normal object. It gives weight to those objects.
And if that wasn't there, these particles wouldn't be around, would be flying around like light. We wouldn't have stars, planets. None of us would be here. It's big news.
RAY SUAREZ: Well to give people a thumbnail physics tutorial, to find out why matter has mass, I guess we have to understand really what mass is. What is mass?
IAN SAMPLE: Well, mass is something that if you take an object and you push it, mass gives you an idea of -- it's kind of a measure of how much resistance it gives to you.
It's also an idea it gives you -- obviously, when you pick something up, how heavy something is depends on its mass. Now, if you pick something up on the moon, if you happen to be on the moon, it would be lighter than it is down on here. Its mass would be the same.
But the mass is something that gives you an idea of how much something will weigh wherever you happen to be and also how much it -- sort of force it takes to push it around. It basically how much heft something has.
RAY SUAREZ: So, for all that celebration, there was a little reluctance to say, eureka, we have found it. The director of the lab said, we have a discovery, we have observed a new particle that's consistent with the Higgs boson, but he wouldn't say it was it. Why not?
IAN SAMPLE: You know what he said to me? He said, as a layman, we have got it. As a scientist, I have to be more cautious than that.
And what this comes down to is they have definitely found a particle. What they need to do now is a lot of checks. And this is going to take months, probably a couple of years to nail down that it's exactly the kind of particle that was predicted 48 years ago back in 1964.
Now, the subtlety here is that there's a really simple kind of Higgs boson that was first postulated in '64, but there are also more complex versions of it. There could be one of, say, five Higgs bosons. And what they can't say at the moment is exactly what kind it is.
They're near as, near as convinced that they have got a kind of Higgs. They just don't know exactly for 100 percent definite. But they have got a particle. And they told me -- senior people there told me they would bet their houses that it was some kind of Higgs.
RAY SUAREZ: One big thing that has happened since the existence of this particle was predicted is that they built this tremendous tool, a $10 billion collider, with which to test the idea. Is there any other way to find out for sure whether this exists besides smashing things together at really high speeds?
IAN SAMPLE: It's really hard to do, because what you achieve in the large hadron collider and what was done with the U.S. Tevatron collider near Chicago was that you need to generate an awful lot of energy in a very small space, a very small volume of space.
And you need to create that energy and then be able to carefully watch what comes off it. And you're looking for these Higgs particles which are created, but as soon as they're created they disintegrate into other stuff we already know about.
Now, you could potentially look for these Higgs particles being produced way out in space, because the kinds of things that are more energetic than the large hadron collider and the Tevatron are cosmic rays. And these are particles that are flung around space.
Now, the problem with that is, it's hard to get a massive detector up into space and it's really hard to do any measurements up in space. So, what you need to do is have all this go on in a really controlled environment, where you can not only be there when stuff happens, but detect it and analyze the heck out of it. You can't really just observe them in the atmosphere, although, theoretically, maybe that's a possibility.
RAY SUAREZ: Well, now that this discovery has been made, can you go somewhere in physics, can you do a next step that wasn't possible before you had this result? Does this open some doors?
IAN SAMPLE: Well, you know what? This is the absolutely crucial point which cannot be answered yet.
And it all revolves on what happens next at CERN. Now, the issue is, if you find the Higgs particle is exactly as predicted by Peter Higgs in 1964, it's very simple. He predicted the most sort of elegant and the most uncomplex kind of Higgs particle you could possibly predict.
If you find that, that's been basically understood, and the idea has been around since '64. And people have got as far as they can based on that understanding.
What everybody in physics, in particle physics at least, is hoping for is that, when they measure the heck out of this particle, it looks different to that simple version, that there's some quirk about it which then tells them something else that they didn't know.
And what they really want to find out, they want to find something they don't understand, which gives them a lead, gives them a door to go through which will help them ultimately understand the kinds of things you're talking about that we don't yet have a clue about.
Why is gravity so weak? What is dark matter, this invisible stuff that clings around galaxies? What is dark energy? What is driving the expansion of universe? There is so much that physics cannot explain at the moment, far more than it can explain. And they are hoping that something quirky about the particle they found will give them a clue where to go next.
RAY SUAREZ: Ian Sample of The Guardian, thanks for joining us.
The CERN coverage was mixed — informed reporting in mystical packaging
It’s 1.20 pm on Wednesday, CERN is wrapping up its Geneva press conference announcing the discovery of the Higgs boson and ‘God particle’ and ‘CERN’ are trending at second and third places on Twitter. What’s taken pole position? #VulgarSlogans. Ah, the sleeping sickness of the hive mind…
But ‘God particle’ was the top trend by late evening, propelled there by the barrage of TV reporting. Flipping through the channels, one was pleasantly surprised to find that while producers and anchors were expectedly moved to absurdity by the ‘divine’ nature of the boson, reporters understood what was afoot. Some channels had correspondents reporting accurately from the venue, saving programmes from the mystical excesses of their producers.
When asked what was the big deal, NDTV’s Noopur Tiwari betrayed the same caution as CERN’s scientists. She said that it was a five sigma finding (a statistical measure of certainty) but clarified that a Higgs boson had been found while several may exist. And she ventured into the mysteries of dark matter, the insensible stuff that makes up all but four per cent of the body of the universe. Until the anchor told her to cut the crap and tell if the scientists were wetting their pants in excitement, though not exactly in those words.
ABP News mashed together astronomical imagery with creationist myth-making: “Who gave birth to the stars and planets, a divine force or a scientific particle?” A strap read, “Science gets a glimpse of God.” But a correspondent in Geneva did a quick but comprehensive interview with CERN physicist Dr Archana Sharma. Meanwhile, IBN-7 had the story in the lead, where it actually belonged at that moment, ahead of the Adarsh scam and Akhilesh Yadav’s automotive profligacy.
Sabse tez Aaj Tak produced the zingiest mash, with stirring background music — Enya meets Star Wars theme with Tchaikovsky setting off cannons to keep time. Highly appropriate for the galactic spectrum that the special of 19 minutes covered. On one hand, Aaj Tak’s reporter Siddharth Tiwari responsibly cautioned that the existence of the Higgs boson was not 100 per cent certain yet — the combined rating of the two sightings reported is actually a fraction under 5 sigma. At the same time, its anchor was mystically convinced that the God particle would explain where volcanoes get their oomph from and make time travel and intergalactic travel possible. Volcanoes?! One correspondent spoke of the “Lord Hadron Collider”— that’s my next World of Warcraft avatar! — and a strap read, God tussi sukshma ho.
Despite weirdness like this conflation of filmi Punjabi and philosophical Sanskrit, the big channels proved to be surprisingly enlightened. Many carried part of the actual Webcast of the CERN conference (To see it in all its si gma giga electron volt magnificence, browse http://webcast.web.cern.ch/webcast/play_higgs.html#). Perhaps it’s experience. The media has had four years to prepare for this discovery since the Large Hadron Collider was commissioned and gone through numerous drills when a sighting of the elusive Higgs boson was declared to be imminent. In journalism, past experience is a great comfort.
One recalls the apocryphal story of the Skylab crash and the editorial writer at the Hindu. In 1979, Skylab was expected to crash as flamboyantly as Krakatoa had erupted and an edit had to be written. Space stations were new, Skylab was the first of its kind and the writer found himself in the great unknown. With nerveless fingers, he reached for his security blanket. He dialled the library and asked the surprised librarian for the file on Skylab crashes. The ‘God particle’ has fared better in the media’s hands.
Whenever we come across a new result one of the first things we ask is “How many sigma is it?!” It’s a strange question, and one that deserves a good answer. What is a sigma? How do sigmas get (mis)used? How many sigmas is enough?
The name “sigma” refers to the symbol for the standard deviation, s. When someone says “It’s a one sigma result!” what they really mean is “If you drew a graph and measured a curve that was one standard deviation away from the underling model then this result would sit on that curve.” Or to use a simple analogy, the height distribution for male adults in the USA is 178cm with a standard deviation of 8cm. If a man measured 170cm tall he would be a one sigma deviation from the norm and we could say that he’s a one sigma effect. As you can probably guess, saying something is a one sigma effect is not very impressive. We need to know a bit more about sigmas before we can say anything meaningful.
The term sigma is usually used for the Gaussian (or normal) distribution, and the normal distribution looks like this:
Higgs Boson Particle Discovery May Help Reveal Dark Matter Secrets
This track is an example of simulated data modelled for the ATLAS detector on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The Higgs boson is produced in the collision of two protons and quickly decays into four muons, a type of heavy electron that is not absorbed by the detector. The tracks of the muons are shown in yellow. CREDIT: CERN
by Denise Chow, SPACE.com Staff Writer Date: 05 July 2012 Time: 02:31 PM ET
The discovery of a new subatomic particle that is likely the elusive Higgs boson — a particle thought to give all other matter its mass — could be an important step toward uncovering the invisible stuff that makes up the majority of the universe, physicists say.
In a much-hyped announcement yesterday (July 4) from the world's largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, scientists reported evidence of a new "Higgs-like" particle [ http://www.livescience.com/21380-higgs-boson-particle-lhc-findings.html ] with roughly 125 times the mass of the proton.
The researchers claimed a high level of certainty that the new particle is the long-sought Higgs boson [ http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2652-higgs-boson-god-particle-explanation.html ], which is thought to answer how all other matter has mass [ http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2641-higgs-particle-mass.html ]. The long-sought-after Higgs is the missing link in the reigning theory of particle physics, known as the Standard Model, but finding the Higgs has even wider implications: It opens the door beyond the Standard Model for explaining the existence of dark matter, the mysterious substance widely thought to make up 83 percent of all matter in the universe.
Dark matter has yet to be directly detected; its presence is inferred based on its gravitational pull. Confirming the characteristics of the newly found Higgs-like particle could account for dark matter.
While dark matter is not explained as part of the Standard Model, evidence for the enigmatic substance (based on its gravitational effects) is hard to ignore. This could mean the Standard Model is only part of a wider framework to explain the universe, said Harvey Newman, a professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology. [Top 5 Implications of Finding the Higgs Boson [ http://www.livescience.com/17433-implications-higgs-boson-discovery-lhc.html ] ]
"We can't really deny the existence of dark matter," Newman told SPACE.com from the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, in Geneva. "The Higgs particle that we found doesn't prevent us at all for searching for particles that lie beyond the Standard Model. We still need a candidate for dark matter."
"You can think of what we found as the key part of the genetic blueprint of the universe," said Maria Spiropulu, another Caltech physics professor of physics, who was in the audience at the July 4 announcement in Switzerland.
"You can think of what we found as the key part of the genetic blueprint of the universe," Spiropulu told SPACE.com in an email. "You remember in 2000 what we all exclaimed and learned about how the genome will lead us to new places. This is a good analogy on the road we are down on, in terms of changing things in our understanding."
Further experiments could indicate that the composition of dark matter requires a more fundamental explanation than the Standard Model, Newman said.
"Even if we find out that this is indeed, to the best of our ability to measure, the Standard Model Higgs boson, there are all these other questions that are unanswered. One of the first questions is: What composes the dark matter in the universe [ http://www.space.com/15936-astronomy-mysteries-science-countdown.html ]? There's no room in the Standard Model of the universe to make up the dark matter, so we have to look at other candidate alternatives."
One such alternative is known as "supersymmetry" or SUSY, which is an extension of the Standard Model. Supersymmetry suggests that every known elemental particle has a partner that is identical except for its spin. For instance, photons would have partner "photinos," and electroweak bosons would have duplicate "electroweak-inos."
"Now a Higgs-like sector in SUSY becomes very rich," Spiropulu said. "You have a set of "higgs-inos" as partners. How the dark matter candidate behaves has to do with how it shakes hands with the electroweak-inos and the higgs-inos. So the (very, very) weakly interacting massive particle of SUSY that fits the bill for the dark matter composition [ http://www.space.com/13377-big-bang-theory-universe-today.html ] of the universe is coupled to the existence of some Higgs and its supersymmetric extension."
The confirmation process for the new particle will take time, as physicists run more experiments and analyze wider sets of data to be sure they are not witnessing anomalous events. Still, it is an exciting time for science.
"Whatever happens, Standard Model or no, we are at the edge of a tremendous generation of exploration," Newman said, "either to find out what's wrong with the Standard Model, or to go back to looking for what are the more fundamental things that are outside the model, and how we explain those."
Higgs boson find could make light-speed travel possible, scientists say
Unlocking great mysteries of the world: Joe Incandela (R), CMS experiment spokesman, gestures next to Rolf Heuer, CERN Director General, talk to reporters at CERN near Geneva on Wednesday. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
National Post Wire Services Jul 5, 2012 – 5:36 PM ET | Last Updated: Jul 6, 2012 5:15 PM ET
The potential discovery of the Higgs boson is a gateway to a new era that could see humanity unlock some of the universe’s great mysteries, including dark matter and light-speed travel, scientists have claimed.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) unveiled data from the Large Hadron Collider Wednesday “consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson,” an elusive particle thought to help explain why matter has mass.
Scientists went into a frenzy following the announcement, speculating that it could one day make light-speed travel possible by “un-massing” objects or allow huge items to be launched into space by “switching off” the Higgs.
CERN scientist Albert de Roeck likened it to the discovery of electricity, when he said humanity could never have imagined its future applications.
“What’s really important for the Higgs is that it explains how the world could be the way that it is in the first millionth of a second in the Big Bang,” de Roeck said.
“Can we apply it to something? At this moment my imagination is too small to do that.”
A representation of traces of a proton-to-proton collision measured in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experience in the search for the Higgs boson. AFP/Getty Images
Physicist Ray Volkas said “almost everybody” was hoping that, rather than fitting the so-called Standard Model of physics — a theory explaining how particles fit together in the Universe — the Higgs boson would prove to be “something a bit different.”
“If that was the case that would point to all sorts of new physics — physics that might have something to do with dark matter,” he said, referring to the hypothetical invisible matter thought to make up much of the universe.
“It could be, for example, that the Higgs particle acts as a bridge between ordinary matter, which makes up atoms, and dark matter, which we know is a very important component of the universe.”
“That would have really fantastic implications for understanding all of the matter in the universe, not just ordinary atoms,” he added.
De Roeck said scrutinizing the new particle and determining whether it supported something other than the Standard Model would be the next step for CERN scientists.
Clarification could be expected by the beginning of 2013. Definitive proof that it fitted the Standard Model could take until 2015 when the LHC had more power and could harvest more data.
The LHC is due to go offline for a two-year refit in December that will see its firepower doubled to 14 trillion electronvolts — a huge step forward in the search for new particles and clues about what holds them all together.
De Roeck said he would find it a “little boring at the end if it turns out that this is just the Standard Model Higgs.”
Breakthrough: (L to R) British physicist Peter Higgs, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer, CMS experiment spokesperson Joe Incandela, ATLAS experiment spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti, and Former CERN Director-General Christopher Llewelyn-Smith pose at a press on July 4, 2012 at CERN on Wednesday. FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/GettyImages
Instead, he was hoping it would be a “gateway or a portal to new physics, to new theories which are actually running nature” such as supersymmetry, which hypothesizes that there are five different Higgs particles governing mass.
The hunt for the Higgs — the logical next step of which de Roeck said would be searching for, and eventually being able to produce, dark matter particles — has already had huge benefits to medicine and technology.
Volkas said the Internet was born at CERN as a solution to high-volume data-sharing and other major spin-offs were likely to follow as physicists continued to “push the boundaries of pure science”.
*
Best of Higgs Field Theory physicists [embedded]
Published on Jul 4, 2012 by CERNTV
Soundbytes from the interviews to Peter Higgs, Francois Englert, Carl Hagen and Gerald Guralnik, recorded at CERN on the announcement of the latest results from ATLAS and CMS on the Higgs boson searches.
“We just want to know how the world works, but in order to answer those questions you have to develop new technologies,” he said.
Funding for particle physics is already under scrutiny in North America, where the LHC’s predecessor, the Illinois-based Tevatron run by Fermilab, was closed late last year due to financial constraints.
Fermilab director Pier Oddone said money was a “big, big issue” threatening progress in the United States and he hoped the Higgs discovery would spur greater funding from U.S. agencies and Congress.
“What I would hope is that this excitement, this focus of the world’s attention on this discovery, will actually help a lot in stimulating and reestablishing particle physics in North America,” Oddone said.
De Roeck said there were similar problems in Europe, where physicists will meet in September to discuss research priorities for the next 20 years and whether they need and can afford an accelerator after the LHC.
“That is going to be a tough fight,” he said. “Despite this momentous moment we have now, it doesn’t necessarily bring the funding which one would require.”
He urged governments and other key contributors to see fundamental science as a “must” rather than a luxury.
“This is the only way we can actually move on and have a deeper understanding of how things work. It can only be in our benefit exploring that.”
*
Higgs boson update at CERN: July 4, 2012, press conference [embedded]
Published on Jul 4, 2012 by thefinancialpost
Scientists at the world's biggest atom smasher hailed the discovery of "the missing cornerstone of physics" Wednesday, cheering the apparent end of a decades-long quest for the Higgs boson
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
