will it make petrol cheap again and bikes affordable? no, so I couldnt give a monkeys

It’s “A Brief History of Time” and 10million people have bought a copy.

But only 3 people bothered reading it beyond the first chapter.

“If I were a betting man, I would bet that it is the Higgs. It is very much a smoking duck that walks and quacks like the Higgs. But we now have to open it up and look inside before we can say that it is indeed the Higgs.”

Hoi-Sin Boson?

2 million of the others thought it was a rustic cookbook with a forward by Hugh Fearnley-Twattinstall: “A Brief History of Thyme”

Did you know the idea of our forefathers believing the earth was flat is largely a myth btw? No one educated has believed in a flat earth for 2000 years.

Didn’t China think it was up until relatively recently? Or is my brain making that up?

Wikipedia would agree with you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth

with extraordinary [sic] few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat

No one educated has believed in a flat earth for 2000 years.

Define “educated”. Educated according to modern scientific standards? According to the church? The tea party?

Define “educated”. Educated according to modern scientific standards? According to the church? The tea party?

This.

Just how many peasants were educated 1066?

So we’re discussing the merit of a statement (‘no one educated has believed…in 2000 years’) which was made in response to a statement (‘scientists were right that the earth isn’t flat’) ignoring the fact the 1st statement is only relevant if scientists only came into existence in the past 2000 years and no earlier?

Nice tangent.
(All THAT for a PUN? Madness)

So, to sum up….

…some physics geeks made a mind model of “The Universe” then some scientists made some measurements and found it “didn’t add up”..

..so, the geeks invented some imaginary stuff, they called it dark matter and dark energy….

..then some scientists showed that the mysterious imaginary stuff still didn’t add up…

…so the geeks made up a particle, and spent 45 years and quadrillions of Euros trying to find it…

And lo, they travelled to a deep cave and didst chance upon a mysterious pattern in the aether, lookst upon it and declared it to be a sign of a go(o)d particle, and they didst name it Higgs, and all was well……..

…was it bollocks 😆

Dr Pippa Wells, a member of the Atlas experiment, said

several of the decay paths already showed deviations from what one would expect of the Standard Model Higgs.
For example, a decay path where the Higgs transforms into two photon particles was “a bit on the high side”
These could get back into line as more statistics are added, but on the other hand, they may not

OK SQT (Stupid Question Time)
As I understand it, they’ve suspected this particle existed for some time. Now they “know” it exists, what will it allow them to “do”?
Anything? or is it all about the academics being able to prove stuff?

So this particle they’ve discovered is very heavy, it will be no use for making bikes with then. But ships could have smaller anchors.

Now they “know” it exists, what will it allow them to “do”?

Practically? Nothing.

Very good introduction to Higgs Here

Practically? Nothing.

in our lifetime. See also: electrons

They would know the standard model is true

Practically? Nothing

at the moment, but standing on the shoulders of giants and all that.

Very good introduction to Higgs Here

If you managed somehow to decrease the mass of the electron, and you’d find atoms would grow larger, and much more fragile. Reduce the electron’s mass by more than a factor of a thousand or so, and atoms would be so delicate that even the leftover heat from the Big Bang that launched our universe could break them apart.

How convenient. It’s almost as if it was designed rather than a massive fluke.

How convenient. It’s almost as if it was designed rather than a massive fluke.

Please don’t… 🙁

How convenient. It’s almost as if it was designed rather than a massive fluke.

That’s not convenient. Convenient would be if your god had then left us the bloody instruction manual and, ideally, a service guide. Like a really big Haynes.

as if it was designed rather than a massive fluke

There is no reason to think that, as you know, because it has been explained to you many times.

Odd that you repeatedly pretend that it hasn’t.

Convenient would be if your god had then left us the bloody instruction manual and, ideally, a service guide. Like a really big Haynes.

It’s far more fun/interesting to find out all this stuff using science rather than just reading a manual.

Anyway, most people never read the instructions anyway. Especially blokes. We just fiddle about with things to see what’s what.

Wouldn’t it be great if in the end, after all these extensive multi-gazzillion quid mega-experiments, a load of white coated boffins came out and said : “well…. it was 42 after all”

Please God, make this happen

thepurist – Member
<geek>
If they’ve found Higgs it’s potentially massive.
</geek>

Or very small. It’s taken some finding.

All this has given me a hardon too, and that’ll take some finding as well 🙁

Wouldn’t it be great if in the end, after all these extensive multi-gazzillion quid mega-experiments, a load of white coated boffins came out and said : “well…. it was 42 after all”

Why would that be “great”?

Now they “know” it exists, what will it allow them to “do”?

Knock on effect. A theory that assumes the Higgs exists now can be used to underpin other theories etc. Thus leading to “actual” gains.

Now they “know” it exists, what will it allow them to “do”?

Get funding to study the Higgs boson particle.

It’s almost as if it was designed rather than a massive fluke

Your right now I wonder what created the creator …was that another designer or another fluke…they never explain that bit do they [ please dont mistake that as an invitation to do so]

Ok. If you don’t already know the story, read up on how Mendeleyev came up with the periodic table.

Now – particle physicists have their own equivalent of the periodic table, called the Standard Model. It fits everything we know, and also predicts new particles that have not been seen, much like the periodic table did for elements. It can predict their properties too.

If they find all these other particles, they’ll be a lot more confident that they actually know what everything is really made of. Quite important, if you want to enjoy sh*t from sci-fi novels in the future.

“Your right now I wonder what created the creator …was that another designer or another fluke…they never explain that bit do they”

Nop… You are going to have to wait, just like the rest of us, for the next “aliens” film

as if it was designed rather than a massive fluke

There is no reason to think that, as you know, because it has been explained to you many times.

Odd that you repeatedly pretend that it hasn’t.

Can’t have been a very convincing explanation I suppose.

So, there was an infinite number of ‘Big Bang’ events that all failed to sustain a universe, until the latest one that had precisely the correct balance of every single thing needed … ?

Or, the universe is a ‘steady state’ thing that’s always existed and had no beginning?

Apparently Big Bang theory boils down to six fundamental numbers. If any of these deviate by just 1% (in one case, by several billionths of a %), life could not exist or have evolved on Earth.

So to my mind, the universe consists of millions of factors that need to coincide in very specific quantities/ways/etc, and I’ve yet to be covinced by any theory as to how this occurred without intervention.

scratch that I’m really not interested in helping this evolve into a religion thread

If any of these deviate by just 1% (in one case, by several billionths of a %), life could not exist or have evolved on Earth.

Does that preclude it evolving anywhere else?

I’ve yet to be covinced by any theory as to how this occurred without intervention.

It’s fortunate, then, the universe does not require your conviction.

I’ve said this before but, just because something is difficult to explain, or difficult to understand, does not not make it incorrect.

intervention? WTF? Like aliens and stuff?

Ok Questions
1) What is an old bloke doing playing around with a hadron in front of some students?
2) Why hasn’t Coxy get hold of that Bassoon yet and cracked out “his” tune?
3) Where is Tony Blair when you need him?
4) Will we now need a LHC wrapped around the earth to expand the project?
5) How many calories does this Haagan Dazs thingumybob hold and will it be allowed in the iDave Diet?

God has an SLA on questions by the way folks, has to answer a call every 90sec’s and if he can’t answer your query, passes it on to his superior.

Apparently Big Bang theory boils down to six fundamental numbers. If any of these deviate by just 1% (in one case, by several billionths of a %), life could not exist or have evolved on Earth.

So hypothetically, it could actually be 42, Couldn’t it?

joao3v16, There is no reason to suppose that a universe with the properties that we can observe is any more “designed” than any other variation. If you posit design, you also have to explain what created (or “designed”) the designer. Something you and your fellow religionists have consistently failed to do.

There is no evidence of a “designer” manifesting itself in our universe, where cause and effect without intervention by an outside influence are evident. A universe with an unmanifest “designer”, looks exactly the same as a complete absence of a “designer”.

That you believe in an unmanifest “designer” despite the absence of any sign of such, is strange, but not very interesting.

And as the thread skews towards all the usual religious twiffle, I take my leave.

(incidentally, are you seriously positing ‘god did it’ as an acceptable explanation, half an hour after pulling up science for being too convenient?)

Call me Dave finds it..