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On this page:
http://blog.vixra.org/2013/03/07/animated-higgs-from-atlas/
There are two animations of the data leading to the declared discovery of the Higgs' boson. They show how the data built up over the course of the experiment (June 2011->Dec 2012).
The top one shows a little (but significant: 5-sigma I understand) bump emerging at ~125 GeV.
http://vixra.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/hgg-floatingscale-short21.gif
The lower one show the data emerging in a different way. Again at ~125GeV you can see the error bars slowly pull away from the background data. The green line at the bottom show the Higgs signal emerging and the blue animation at the end shows the energy predicted by the standard model. You see that the error bars of the observed events don't all touch this, so there may be more there than previously thought.
Quite a tricky discovery to sell through the media as it was found through accumulated data rather than a track in a cloud chamber.
http://blog.vixra.org/2013/03/07/animated-higgs-from-atlas/
There are two animations of the data leading to the declared discovery of the Higgs' boson. They show how the data built up over the course of the experiment (June 2011->Dec 2012).
The top one shows a little (but significant: 5-sigma I understand) bump emerging at ~125 GeV.
http://vixra.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/hgg-floatingscale-short21.gif
The lower one show the data emerging in a different way. Again at ~125GeV you can see the error bars slowly pull away from the background data. The green line at the bottom show the Higgs signal emerging and the blue animation at the end shows the energy predicted by the standard model. You see that the error bars of the observed events don't all touch this, so there may be more there than previously thought.
Quite a tricky discovery to sell through the media as it was found through accumulated data rather than a track in a cloud chamber.
In reply to lowersharpnose:
Exciting stuff, isn't it. Cheap for £6 billion as well.
Still, it answered some pretty important questions by providing a predictive theory for the existence of things like the electron. Oh, no, it did not.
Perhaps if we spend 10x as much on a Very Large Hadron Collider it will answers these questions
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=physicists-now-want-a-very...
Exciting stuff, isn't it. Cheap for £6 billion as well.
Still, it answered some pretty important questions by providing a predictive theory for the existence of things like the electron. Oh, no, it did not.
Perhaps if we spend 10x as much on a Very Large Hadron Collider it will answers these questions
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=physicists-now-want-a-very...
In reply to wintertree:
There was something published about the electron very recently. Some recent work has measured that the electron is spherical down to at least 10^-30m. That means that if it has any structure it is at a smaller scale. Quite a few theories that were intended to replace the standard model have been blown up by this result as they predicted that the electron would demonstrate structure way above this scale.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=electron-spherical-electri...
There was something published about the electron very recently. Some recent work has measured that the electron is spherical down to at least 10^-30m. That means that if it has any structure it is at a smaller scale. Quite a few theories that were intended to replace the standard model have been blown up by this result as they predicted that the electron would demonstrate structure way above this scale.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=electron-spherical-electri...
In reply to lowersharpnose:
All good stuff. Interestingly, the Higgs' boson appears to have entered (semi)popular parlance, with someone at the recent seminar I attended saying "All I know about mid-infra-red spectroscopy could be written on a Higgs' boson"!
All good stuff. Interestingly, the Higgs' boson appears to have entered (semi)popular parlance, with someone at the recent seminar I attended saying "All I know about mid-infra-red spectroscopy could be written on a Higgs' boson"!
In reply to lowersharpnose:
It will be interesting to see where all this leads us in a few years time.
Very often a discovery that has seemingly no practical value gives rise to unforseen technologies
It will be interesting to see where all this leads us in a few years time.
Very often a discovery that has seemingly no practical value gives rise to unforseen technologies
In reply to Duncan Bourne:
Well you are right of course:-
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/06/after-the-higgs-boson-what...
> It will be interesting to see where all this leads us in a few years time.
> Very often a discovery that has seemingly no practical value gives rise to unforseen technologies
Well you are right of course:-
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/06/after-the-higgs-boson-what...
In reply to lowersharpnose:
No point in beefing about it
> The correct spelling is sobriquet, I made a misteak.
No point in beefing about it
In reply to Rob:
Well if they say that, they ignore ( or don't know) the lifetime of about a Higgs Boson :-,
"if you produce a Higgs, it will decay in about a zeptosecond–(a thousandth of a billionth OF A billionth of a second.) "
They would need to very small AND be very fast writers
> All good stuff. Interestingly, the Higgs' boson appears to have entered (semi)popular parlance, with someone at the recent seminar I attended saying "All I know about mid-infra-red spectroscopy could be written on a Higgs' boson"!
Well if they say that, they ignore ( or don't know) the lifetime of about a Higgs Boson :-,
"if you produce a Higgs, it will decay in about a zeptosecond–(a thousandth of a billionth OF A billionth of a second.) "
They would need to very small AND be very fast writers
In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
unless, it turn out to be the missing link to a anti- gravity machine !
( but then all the fun would be out of climbing anyway)
> So it won't help me to climb any harder then. Boring.
unless, it turn out to be the missing link to a anti- gravity machine !
( but then all the fun would be out of climbing anyway)
In reply to Jim C:
A good article.
Right now we can not see any practical use for the Higgs but I doubt that when Rutherford split nitrogen into oxygen in 1917 he fully imagined where that would lead
A good article.
Right now we can not see any practical use for the Higgs but I doubt that when Rutherford split nitrogen into oxygen in 1917 he fully imagined where that would lead
In reply to Duncan Bourne:
Yes and it didn't take long for Rutherford's theories to make a big difference to the world. On the other hand, quarks were first theorised almost half a century ago and haven't really done anything for us, and I doubt our proof that the Higgs field exists will do much for us for some time either.
> Right now we can not see any practical use for the Higgs but I doubt that when Rutherford split nitrogen into oxygen in 1917 he fully imagined where that would lead
Yes and it didn't take long for Rutherford's theories to make a big difference to the world. On the other hand, quarks were first theorised almost half a century ago and haven't really done anything for us, and I doubt our proof that the Higgs field exists will do much for us for some time either.
In reply to Duncan Bourne: But doesn't just focusing on the successes of blind research paint a distorted picture?
In reply to wintertree:
Especially so when you consider that the cost was distributed between most of the worlds ten or so biggest economies, and was paid for over the course of about a decade. To an individual UK taxpayer, it was about the cost of a pint of beer, per year, for ten years. Excellent value for an insight into the inner workings of the universe...
> Cheap for £6 billion as well.
Especially so when you consider that the cost was distributed between most of the worlds ten or so biggest economies, and was paid for over the course of about a decade. To an individual UK taxpayer, it was about the cost of a pint of beer, per year, for ten years. Excellent value for an insight into the inner workings of the universe...
In reply to Jim Brooke: But I guess I would say the same if something of interest to me was pursued, at almost no cost to myself.
In reply to lowersharpnose:
The other experiment (CMS) was a little behind ATLAS, but they also made an animation for one of the channels :
http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/higgs_discovery_animation...
As you say, explaining the nature of this kind of experiment is rather difficult. We used to talk about needles in haystacks a lot, but it gets difficult to explain that you can't immediately know if you've found a needle.... You need a statistically significant sample of needle-like straws (ish). These animations are a great way to explain the problem....
The other experiment (CMS) was a little behind ATLAS, but they also made an animation for one of the channels :
http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/higgs_discovery_animation...
As you say, explaining the nature of this kind of experiment is rather difficult. We used to talk about needles in haystacks a lot, but it gets difficult to explain that you can't immediately know if you've found a needle.... You need a statistically significant sample of needle-like straws (ish). These animations are a great way to explain the problem....
In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
Erm, yes you would. What's the point?
> But I guess I would say the same if something of interest to me was pursued, at almost no cost to myself.
Erm, yes you would. What's the point?
In reply to Jim Brooke: Excellent value? 6 billion spent, your curiosity is satisfied, but we don't even know what any of the other benefits will be.
In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
Not just mine - you can gauge the global interest through the amount of press generated around the discovery. Obviously one can't quantify the economic value of satisfied curiosity, but in general people seem to think the price I quoted above was worth it. If you don't, suggest you lobby government the cut science funding. Oh, you don't need to... but that's another story.
And no, we don't know the the other benefits would be - what do you expect from blue skies research!?! If we left it to people like you, we wouldn't even have found the caves yet, let alone left them....
> Excellent value? 6 billion spent, your curiosity is satisfied, but we don't even know what any of the other benefits will be.
Not just mine - you can gauge the global interest through the amount of press generated around the discovery. Obviously one can't quantify the economic value of satisfied curiosity, but in general people seem to think the price I quoted above was worth it. If you don't, suggest you lobby government the cut science funding. Oh, you don't need to... but that's another story.
And no, we don't know the the other benefits would be - what do you expect from blue skies research!?! If we left it to people like you, we wouldn't even have found the caves yet, let alone left them....
In reply to Jim Brooke: Maybe you can gauge the interest level, but has anybody done this? I haven't seen too much in the mainstream media over the last year or so. Another series of X-Factor might be better value based on that measure. Do people think it was worth it in general, or just people interested in scientific research? I presume somebody's done a survey.
Oh, people like me, what am I like?
Oh, people like me, what am I like?
In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
I think it's hard to come up with a measure of worth for research into basic science, similarly for the value of public art or preserving landscapes.
There are loads of things that we spend money on because they just enhance our lives (collectively, not as individuals) or contribute to the progress of humanity in vague unspecified ways - or because we hope they'll have a positive impact later. I think it's a good thing that we do stuff that can't be justified by a banal list of immediate benefits, it allows room for creativity.
I think it's hard to come up with a measure of worth for research into basic science, similarly for the value of public art or preserving landscapes.
There are loads of things that we spend money on because they just enhance our lives (collectively, not as individuals) or contribute to the progress of humanity in vague unspecified ways - or because we hope they'll have a positive impact later. I think it's a good thing that we do stuff that can't be justified by a banal list of immediate benefits, it allows room for creativity.
In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
There hasn't been too much in the mainstream media over the last year, because this is an extremely slow process and there is not a lot of news right now.... Last year it was covered by basically every news agency in existence. You should expect the next set of headlines in ~2015. CERN certainly has done surveys on the public interest. Obviously it's not easy to quantify... I'd look them up but I'm going to the pub.
On the blue skies point, more seriously - are you aware of *any* advance in science and technology that does not owe a debt to blue skies research? Flint tools, electricity, electronics, you name it - all started from research that "had no applications" at the time... It's not *simply* about curiosity. Knowledge is a long-term investment.
There hasn't been too much in the mainstream media over the last year, because this is an extremely slow process and there is not a lot of news right now.... Last year it was covered by basically every news agency in existence. You should expect the next set of headlines in ~2015. CERN certainly has done surveys on the public interest. Obviously it's not easy to quantify... I'd look them up but I'm going to the pub.
On the blue skies point, more seriously - are you aware of *any* advance in science and technology that does not owe a debt to blue skies research? Flint tools, electricity, electronics, you name it - all started from research that "had no applications" at the time... It's not *simply* about curiosity. Knowledge is a long-term investment.
In reply to everyone:
Maybe I am being slightly misunderstood, I find science interesting, I hope that the LHC is good value, but if I was asked to evaluate it's value for money, I'd struggle to list the variables let alone put a value to them (and surely some can only be assessed in the future).
I also wonder who fights for these big budget projects, and do those same people do well out of them?
I also do like X Factor, but I'm willing to do without if the money can be put to better use.
Maybe I am being slightly misunderstood, I find science interesting, I hope that the LHC is good value, but if I was asked to evaluate it's value for money, I'd struggle to list the variables let alone put a value to them (and surely some can only be assessed in the future).
I also wonder who fights for these big budget projects, and do those same people do well out of them?
I also do like X Factor, but I'm willing to do without if the money can be put to better use.
Post edited at 20:09
In reply to Jim Brooke: Sorry Jim, I didn't mean to give the impression I was against this sort of research, like I said above, I find it hard to put a figure on something like this and say 'good value' or 'bad value'. Maybe it's the best 6 billion we've ever spent.
In reply to Jim Brooke:
No, you can judge the ability off one field to manipulate the media. There are much more interesting, relevant and comprehensible descoveries with equally profound implications that are getting very little to no popular press, for example inferring climate effects (inversion layers) on extra solar planets.
> Not just mine - you can gauge the global interest through the amount of press generated around the discovery
No, you can judge the ability off one field to manipulate the media. There are much more interesting, relevant and comprehensible descoveries with equally profound implications that are getting very little to no popular press, for example inferring climate effects (inversion layers) on extra solar planets.
In reply to wintertree:
While it is completely incomprehensible to the layman like me (I have a degree in physics), fundamental physics does have a unique place which no other area of science can compete with.
While it is completely incomprehensible to the layman like me (I have a degree in physics), fundamental physics does have a unique place which no other area of science can compete with.
In reply to lowersharpnose:
Something I always like to think of with respect to what goes on and gets discovered in uber expensive particle accelerators and cross-continental science ventures:
Back in the 1800s when Maxwell, Faraday et al were working out the finer points of electricity and magnetism, the general perception was that these were mere curiosities...
Electromagnetic theory was very much the Standard Model of the day, now, our entire civilisation is based upon a 19th Century curiosity...
Cascade THAT to your team!
Something I always like to think of with respect to what goes on and gets discovered in uber expensive particle accelerators and cross-continental science ventures:
Back in the 1800s when Maxwell, Faraday et al were working out the finer points of electricity and magnetism, the general perception was that these were mere curiosities...
Electromagnetic theory was very much the Standard Model of the day, now, our entire civilisation is based upon a 19th Century curiosity...
Cascade THAT to your team!
In reply to lowersharpnose:
I was in Morzine on the day that they first made the TV announcement about the discovery of the Higgs boson, I've never seen a storm like that before, it looked like the Storm that was brewing up on the hill Cern way was out of Mordor a massive inversion sucking everything up into a black hole like vortex, and then the electrical storm which followed felt like a firework display at street level, and on some random coincidence I called into a local pub to get out of the rain and my cousin who I hadn't seen for a good while was sat there at the bar with his mate, I went and sat down with them to say hi, and it was like some random double take moment that they couldn't believe what they were seeing.
I was in Morzine on the day that they first made the TV announcement about the discovery of the Higgs boson, I've never seen a storm like that before, it looked like the Storm that was brewing up on the hill Cern way was out of Mordor a massive inversion sucking everything up into a black hole like vortex, and then the electrical storm which followed felt like a firework display at street level, and on some random coincidence I called into a local pub to get out of the rain and my cousin who I hadn't seen for a good while was sat there at the bar with his mate, I went and sat down with them to say hi, and it was like some random double take moment that they couldn't believe what they were seeing.
In reply to lowersharpnose: I think it's hard to put value on an individual project, I was just wondering how somebody else can say a project is good value. But at least you have to assess cost against the possible return of the project (value?), even if that return is just knowledge, otherwise how would you decide what to fund and how much to fund it?
In reply to lowersharpnose:
Can they now start investing more money in nuclear fusion, now that's exciting and would have almost immediate applications of use. Or would the oil companies not be happy?
Can they now start investing more money in nuclear fusion, now that's exciting and would have almost immediate applications of use. Or would the oil companies not be happy?
In reply to Duncan Bourne: Because you only see success. Maybe there are plenty of well financed research projects that produce nothing useful.
In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
It's an interesting one that. Speaking in hideously generic terms, finding 'nothing' in a research project is just as important as finding 'something', as 'nothing' can rule out a lot of stuff.
Out of date now it's been found (but applicable to other searches), but take as an example a quick (3 min) talk by a friend:
youtube.com/watch?v=QP3wSSHYdG8&
Edit: Hi Jim!
> Because you only see success. Maybe there are plenty of well financed research projects that produce nothing useful.
It's an interesting one that. Speaking in hideously generic terms, finding 'nothing' in a research project is just as important as finding 'something', as 'nothing' can rule out a lot of stuff.
Out of date now it's been found (but applicable to other searches), but take as an example a quick (3 min) talk by a friend:
youtube.com/watch?v=QP3wSSHYdG8&
Edit: Hi Jim!
Post edited at 09:53
In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
That is quite true you never get news reports saying such and such a research failed to achieve its aim
That is quite true you never get news reports saying such and such a research failed to achieve its aim
In reply to Duncan Bourne:
That's because research is usually saying 'can we do this' or 'is nature this way' rather than saying 'we are going to' or equivalent. Null results are important to know what is not true!
That's because research is usually saying 'can we do this' or 'is nature this way' rather than saying 'we are going to' or equivalent. Null results are important to know what is not true!
In reply to James Jackson: I wouldn't think of it in such a black and white, succeed or fail mentality. There's always a finite pot of money, isn't it about making the best use of it?
In reply to James Jackson:
Too many people are reluctant to write up null results.
> Sorry, and my point is therefore that research rarely 'fails'.
Too many people are reluctant to write up null results.
In reply to Jonny2vests:
Do you think that folk don't write them up because they lack confidence in their experiment?
Surely, a null result is a valid result and should be written up.
Do you think that folk don't write them up because they lack confidence in their experiment?
Surely, a null result is a valid result and should be written up.
In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
But we don't know what will be genuinely useful and produce results that are value for money (whatever that means). Look at the research MRI came out of, who'd gave thought?
> I wouldn't think of it in such a black and white, succeed or fail mentality. There's always a finite pot of money, isn't it about making the best use of it?
But we don't know what will be genuinely useful and produce results that are value for money (whatever that means). Look at the research MRI came out of, who'd gave thought?
In reply to Beat me to it!: So do we pick a name out of a hat, then generate a random amount and hand that amount to that person? Surely there's some decision making going on? How do you evaluate a potential experiment against another?
In reply to lowersharpnose:
Also I think it was idle curiosity in measuring reaction speeds that led to the understanding of how CFCs breakdown. Totally irrelevant at the time, until someone realised it was the same mechanism destroying the ozone. I think the more knowledge the better, no mater how obscure it may seem it helps to fill in the blanks. Who's knows where it will lead. Hopefully back to the future hover boards. Or at the very least they'll crack jetpacks
Also I think it was idle curiosity in measuring reaction speeds that led to the understanding of how CFCs breakdown. Totally irrelevant at the time, until someone realised it was the same mechanism destroying the ozone. I think the more knowledge the better, no mater how obscure it may seem it helps to fill in the blanks. Who's knows where it will lead. Hopefully back to the future hover boards. Or at the very least they'll crack jetpacks
In reply to Jonny2vests:
In some fields (medicine is particularly bad), yes.
> Too many people are reluctant to write up null results.
In some fields (medicine is particularly bad), yes.
In reply to James Jackson:
It's also worth noticing that in the specific case of the LHC, aside from the possible future benefits from blue skies research (which may well be significant but, as you say, we can't know yet), there are guaranteed technological advances. Environments such as those present at the LHC require leaps forward in our engineering abilities that there isn't the impetus for in industry, yet when the advance has been made many applications are often found.
The web is a prime example of this, originally a fairly esoteric tool for scientists to make data easily available to each other, yet now it brings in billions each year and has changed the way we live our every day lives. The current experiments promise to bring advances in distributed computing and have already led to faster electronics (we have a chip that can process and analyse the same amount of data as the entire traffic of the internet just a couple of years ago).
It's also worth noticing that in the specific case of the LHC, aside from the possible future benefits from blue skies research (which may well be significant but, as you say, we can't know yet), there are guaranteed technological advances. Environments such as those present at the LHC require leaps forward in our engineering abilities that there isn't the impetus for in industry, yet when the advance has been made many applications are often found.
The web is a prime example of this, originally a fairly esoteric tool for scientists to make data easily available to each other, yet now it brings in billions each year and has changed the way we live our every day lives. The current experiments promise to bring advances in distributed computing and have already led to faster electronics (we have a chip that can process and analyse the same amount of data as the entire traffic of the internet just a couple of years ago).
In reply to lowersharpnose:
6 billion and all we get is a dodgy .gif that looks like it was done on Excel in 1993!
Worth it though...
6 billion and all we get is a dodgy .gif that looks like it was done on Excel in 1993!
Worth it though...
In reply to lowersharpnose:
Possibly. I think its mainly because they think it might tarnish their record.
> Do you think that folk don't write them up because they lack confidence in their experiment?
Possibly. I think its mainly because they think it might tarnish their record.
In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
Well others don't find it difficult. It's not an exact science, but it's possible to evaluate the scientific, social and economic impact of experiments like the LHC. Research scientists are required to do this all the time... I think most physicists would agree that the discovery of the Higgs boson is waaaay up there in terms of scientific value, and worth the investment. The value of the science, and the direction the funding goes in, is all decided by peer review.
My point about the 6Bn is that it *sounds* like a big number, which makes everyone question whether it's worth it, but in the grand scheme of things it's just NOT a very big number at all. UK science funding is ~£4.5bn per year - remember the LHC is a GLOBAL project. The UK medical research council has spent about £6bn over the past 20 years (the amount of time the LHC project has been going). What is exceptional about the LHC is not the amount spent on the science, but the amount spent on a single project. (So what is really remarkable is that it actually works!)
The people who fight for these projects are scientists who think the particular science in question is important. In the case of the LHC, particle physicists argued the case, and won. Whether they do well depends on what you mean by "do well". Yes, they get their science done, if that's what you mean by do well - but that was their original goal for arguing to get the thing built... Financially, I don't think any individual particle physicist has done any better from the LHC than any other academic...
> Maybe I am being slightly misunderstood, I find science interesting, I hope that the LHC is good value, but if I was asked to evaluate it's value for money, I'd struggle to list the variables let alone put a value to them (and surely some can only be assessed in the future).
Well others don't find it difficult. It's not an exact science, but it's possible to evaluate the scientific, social and economic impact of experiments like the LHC. Research scientists are required to do this all the time... I think most physicists would agree that the discovery of the Higgs boson is waaaay up there in terms of scientific value, and worth the investment. The value of the science, and the direction the funding goes in, is all decided by peer review.
My point about the 6Bn is that it *sounds* like a big number, which makes everyone question whether it's worth it, but in the grand scheme of things it's just NOT a very big number at all. UK science funding is ~£4.5bn per year - remember the LHC is a GLOBAL project. The UK medical research council has spent about £6bn over the past 20 years (the amount of time the LHC project has been going). What is exceptional about the LHC is not the amount spent on the science, but the amount spent on a single project. (So what is really remarkable is that it actually works!)
> I also wonder who fights for these big budget projects, and do those same people do well out of them?
The people who fight for these projects are scientists who think the particular science in question is important. In the case of the LHC, particle physicists argued the case, and won. Whether they do well depends on what you mean by "do well". Yes, they get their science done, if that's what you mean by do well - but that was their original goal for arguing to get the thing built... Financially, I don't think any individual particle physicist has done any better from the LHC than any other academic...
In reply to wintertree:
I said the media would not report on the LHC if the public were not interested. That does not mean the public are not interested in what is not reported...
"Manipulate the media" is an interesting phrase. Actually, we're just trying to communicate what we're doing to the public. Since we are spending the taxpayers billions, I think it's kinda fundamentally important that we communicate what we are doing. And yet you call it media manipulation; sometimes I think you can't win...
I agree there is equally (or at least very) interesting science that the media does not report. Loads of it. To me, that just means the scientists concerned need to spend more time getting their stuff in the press. If it's that interesting, it should just be a matter of getting out there and telling people what they're doing. Right? (You can't blame particle physics for stealing the limelight - if we get more column inches we're just more effective at "manipulation" or "communicating", whichever you prefer).
> No, you can judge the ability off one field to manipulate the media. There are much more interesting, relevant and comprehensible descoveries with equally profound implications that are getting very little to no popular press, for example inferring climate effects (inversion layers) on extra solar planets.
I said the media would not report on the LHC if the public were not interested. That does not mean the public are not interested in what is not reported...
"Manipulate the media" is an interesting phrase. Actually, we're just trying to communicate what we're doing to the public. Since we are spending the taxpayers billions, I think it's kinda fundamentally important that we communicate what we are doing. And yet you call it media manipulation; sometimes I think you can't win...
I agree there is equally (or at least very) interesting science that the media does not report. Loads of it. To me, that just means the scientists concerned need to spend more time getting their stuff in the press. If it's that interesting, it should just be a matter of getting out there and telling people what they're doing. Right? (You can't blame particle physics for stealing the limelight - if we get more column inches we're just more effective at "manipulation" or "communicating", whichever you prefer).
In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
You put proponents for all the competing experiments in a room and let them fight it out. Sometimes this is done anonymously - aka peer review.
> How do you evaluate a potential experiment against another?
You put proponents for all the competing experiments in a room and let them fight it out. Sometimes this is done anonymously - aka peer review.
In reply to Jim Brooke: Interesting points, thanks. You don't think any individual has done well. Why do you think this? Finger in the air?
In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
Insider knowledge...
BTW, you didn't say what you mean by "doing well". LHC scientists have done *extremely* well in academic terms (http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7235 - 2000 citations in 18 months). I assume you mean financially. LHC physicists are not paid any more than non-LHC physicists, although some rise through the ranks faster due to their academic success... (Not me, unfortunately). I suppose some have done very well through ridiculous prize money since the Higgs discovery, but.... Higgs and Englert (who won the Nobel,) aren't LHC scientists. And the big experimental prize (http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2012/12/fundamental-physics-prize-hon... has almost entirely been donated to scholarship funds etc.
The top end is probably around 100k, which is very nice indeed - but it's no higher than the top end of other scientific/engineering disciplines. A small handful of particle physicists have won prize money since the Higgs dicovery...
Insider knowledge...
BTW, you didn't say what you mean by "doing well". LHC scientists have done *extremely* well in academic terms (http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7235 - 2000 citations in 18 months). I assume you mean financially. LHC physicists are not paid any more than non-LHC physicists, although some rise through the ranks faster due to their academic success... (Not me, unfortunately). I suppose some have done very well through ridiculous prize money since the Higgs discovery, but.... Higgs and Englert (who won the Nobel,) aren't LHC scientists. And the big experimental prize (http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2012/12/fundamental-physics-prize-hon... has almost entirely been donated to scholarship funds etc.
The top end is probably around 100k, which is very nice indeed - but it's no higher than the top end of other scientific/engineering disciplines. A small handful of particle physicists have won prize money since the Higgs dicovery...
In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
PS - actually, all the people I can think of who have done well (financially) out of the LHC are the ones who did PhDs and then moved into industry. I'd guess they earn 50% more... ish
They don't all manage that, though. Hi James!
PS - actually, all the people I can think of who have done well (financially) out of the LHC are the ones who did PhDs and then moved into industry. I'd guess they earn 50% more... ish
They don't all manage that, though. Hi James!
In reply to Jim Brooke:
It's true, I was an academic failure and a commercial flop. Had to run away to distant lands to hide from the reality of it all.
It's true, I was an academic failure and a commercial flop. Had to run away to distant lands to hide from the reality of it all.
In reply to Jim Brooke: Doing well as in good job, fat salary, yes. I was wondering if the same people who lobby for this money are the same ones who get the good jobs. Obviously all this stuff is highly specialised, I would think the best people to make the call about the funding are possibly the best people to work on the LHC?
In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
The people who lobby successfully for funding - ie win research grants - will generally improve their academic standing, which will usually translate into improved positions and higher salaries. What's the problem with that? They don't get to decide whether their bids are funded or not - that would be stupid for obvious reasons! Btw, this is true across academia, it's not specific to science or big science...
When it comes to big projects like the LHC, funding will generally be approved at ministerial level, which means the proponents have to sell their plan to non-experts, which some lobbyists may be better at than others (or put another way, some scientists are better at communication than others) but in the long run I suspect it all comes out in the wash...
The people who lobby successfully for funding - ie win research grants - will generally improve their academic standing, which will usually translate into improved positions and higher salaries. What's the problem with that? They don't get to decide whether their bids are funded or not - that would be stupid for obvious reasons! Btw, this is true across academia, it's not specific to science or big science...
When it comes to big projects like the LHC, funding will generally be approved at ministerial level, which means the proponents have to sell their plan to non-experts, which some lobbyists may be better at than others (or put another way, some scientists are better at communication than others) but in the long run I suspect it all comes out in the wash...
Post edited at 22:47
In reply to Jim Brooke: I think the problem can be that it's not in the interests of the people who award the grants to be critical because it makes their judgement look bad, and obviously it's not in the interests of the academics who get the money to be critical of that judgement. So where do the critical voices come from?
I think I started to wonder about that when they started talking about the Higgs as the God particle. It gets your interest, but despite what I've heard since about the Higgs, I still don't get it. If it's just PR, then that makes me a bit suspicious. If the scientific importance stands on it's own, why the hyperbole?
And apart from a false start, you only hear positive things about what goes on, but sometimes they come from people who don't seem to know much about research grants, and what you would expect for 6 billion invested. This isn't a problem in itself, but when you see a lot of scientists so excited that evidence for the Higgs has been found, I do wonder why. As somebody else mentioned in this thread, a negative can be just as useful as a positive, maybe more so and the absence of the Higgs might lead to new thinking and a scientific revolution (maybe there are some precedents with quantum mechanics and gravity/dark energy). Which leads me to believe they're more interested in being proved right, that the potential benefits of the LHC.
These are just my thoughts, I'm a total layman, I don't pretend to understand the science.
I think I started to wonder about that when they started talking about the Higgs as the God particle. It gets your interest, but despite what I've heard since about the Higgs, I still don't get it. If it's just PR, then that makes me a bit suspicious. If the scientific importance stands on it's own, why the hyperbole?
And apart from a false start, you only hear positive things about what goes on, but sometimes they come from people who don't seem to know much about research grants, and what you would expect for 6 billion invested. This isn't a problem in itself, but when you see a lot of scientists so excited that evidence for the Higgs has been found, I do wonder why. As somebody else mentioned in this thread, a negative can be just as useful as a positive, maybe more so and the absence of the Higgs might lead to new thinking and a scientific revolution (maybe there are some precedents with quantum mechanics and gravity/dark energy). Which leads me to believe they're more interested in being proved right, that the potential benefits of the LHC.
These are just my thoughts, I'm a total layman, I don't pretend to understand the science.
In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
The data so far does not shout "job finished" for the Higgs. In the OP, I wrote The green line at the bottom show the Higgs signal emerging and the blue animation at the end shows the energy predicted by the standard model. You see that the error bars of the observed events don't all touch this, so there may be more there than previously thought.
The data so far does not shout "job finished" for the Higgs. In the OP, I wrote The green line at the bottom show the Higgs signal emerging and the blue animation at the end shows the energy predicted by the standard model. You see that the error bars of the observed events don't all touch this, so there may be more there than previously thought.
In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
I think the people awarding the money will in general be pretty critical, it's just that they're critical of the competency of the people they're giving the money too, not necessarily the end results. After all, you'll look pretty silly if you award 50% of the countries research budget to teams who then throw the money down the toilet and have no useful science to show for it.
> I think the problem can be that it's not in the interests of the people who award the grants to be critical because it makes their judgement look bad, and obviously it's not in the interests of the academics who get the money to be critical of that judgement. So where do the critical voices come from?
I think the people awarding the money will in general be pretty critical, it's just that they're critical of the competency of the people they're giving the money too, not necessarily the end results. After all, you'll look pretty silly if you award 50% of the countries research budget to teams who then throw the money down the toilet and have no useful science to show for it.
In reply to remus:
Doesn't string theory take a rather large share of the research pie and have no useful science to show for it?
Doesn't string theory take a rather large share of the research pie and have no useful science to show for it?
In reply to lowersharpnose:
Not really. String theory is just that - theory. And theory only requires people to do hard thinking and occasionally computation, which is pretty cheap by comparison with big experiments to test what is realised in nature.... String theory's "downfall" is that it does not make any predictions which can realistically be tested using currently, or foreseeably, available technology... So testing it is not going to cost anything either - we just can't.
> Doesn't string theory take a rather large share of the research pie and have no useful science to show for it?
Not really. String theory is just that - theory. And theory only requires people to do hard thinking and occasionally computation, which is pretty cheap by comparison with big experiments to test what is realised in nature.... String theory's "downfall" is that it does not make any predictions which can realistically be tested using currently, or foreseeably, available technology... So testing it is not going to cost anything either - we just can't.
In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
I don't understand why the people who award grants would appear to have bad judgement by not awarding funding. Let's hope not, because the majority of proposals are not funded...
That term was not invented by particle physicists, and most I know absolutely detest it. It was coined by a publisher who disliked the physicist author's preferred term "that godamn particle". We have been battling against it ever since....
Or perhaps it has just been a remarkable success?
The reason everyone is so excited is because the existence of this particle was posited about 40 years ago as a possible solution to an extremely important problem. Prior to Higgs et al's hypothesis, the theory could not accommodate particles with mass. A pretty serious problem, since we know most particles do have mass. If the theory that solves this problem has just been shown to be correct, this is very big news in terms of fundamental physics. Sure, the absence of the Higgs would be equally big news - but that's not how nature is. One reason the LHC was funded is that it could show the Higgs, as hypothesised, did not exist, and this would be equally interesting. The outcome of the experiment was determined by nature, not by physicists....
I'm a bit lost now. Are you saying we falsified the outcome of the experiment to "prove ourselves right" ? Personally, I find the idea deeply offensive. And anyway, the people who predicted existence of the Higgs are not the same people who demonstrated it exists (assuming what we have seen actually IS the thing predicted - so far it looks a lot like it, but there could still be important differences....)
On the subject of negative outcomes - we have published hundreds of papers on non-existence of things that theorists have proposed might exist. (Or more accurately, we have constrained the details of proposed theories; usually there is some wiggle room available where the theories could still be true with certain parameters, and we would not have observed evidence for them).
> I think the problem can be that it's not in the interests of the people who award the grants to be critical because it makes their judgement look bad, and obviously it's not in the interests of the academics who get the money to be critical of that judgement. So where do the critical voices come from?
I don't understand why the people who award grants would appear to have bad judgement by not awarding funding. Let's hope not, because the majority of proposals are not funded...
> I think I started to wonder about that when they started talking about the Higgs as the God particle. It gets your interest, but despite what I've heard since about the Higgs, I still don't get it. If it's just PR, then that makes me a bit suspicious. If the scientific importance stands on it's own, why the hyperbole?
That term was not invented by particle physicists, and most I know absolutely detest it. It was coined by a publisher who disliked the physicist author's preferred term "that godamn particle". We have been battling against it ever since....
> And apart from a false start, you only hear positive things about what goes on, but sometimes they come from people who don't seem to know much about research grants, and what you would expect for 6 billion invested.
Or perhaps it has just been a remarkable success?
> This isn't a problem in itself, but when you see a lot of scientists so excited that evidence for the Higgs has been found, I do wonder why.
The reason everyone is so excited is because the existence of this particle was posited about 40 years ago as a possible solution to an extremely important problem. Prior to Higgs et al's hypothesis, the theory could not accommodate particles with mass. A pretty serious problem, since we know most particles do have mass. If the theory that solves this problem has just been shown to be correct, this is very big news in terms of fundamental physics. Sure, the absence of the Higgs would be equally big news - but that's not how nature is. One reason the LHC was funded is that it could show the Higgs, as hypothesised, did not exist, and this would be equally interesting. The outcome of the experiment was determined by nature, not by physicists....
> As somebody else mentioned in this thread, a negative can be just as useful as a positive, maybe more so and the absence of the Higgs might lead to new thinking and a scientific revolution (maybe there are some precedents with quantum mechanics and gravity/dark energy). Which leads me to believe they're more interested in being proved right, that the potential benefits of the LHC.
I'm a bit lost now. Are you saying we falsified the outcome of the experiment to "prove ourselves right" ? Personally, I find the idea deeply offensive. And anyway, the people who predicted existence of the Higgs are not the same people who demonstrated it exists (assuming what we have seen actually IS the thing predicted - so far it looks a lot like it, but there could still be important differences....)
On the subject of negative outcomes - we have published hundreds of papers on non-existence of things that theorists have proposed might exist. (Or more accurately, we have constrained the details of proposed theories; usually there is some wiggle room available where the theories could still be true with certain parameters, and we would not have observed evidence for them).
In reply to Jim Brooke:
I think you've misunderstood most of what I meant, maybe it's my fault. Not sure I can handle another long post.
BTW, I'm not saying anything bad about the scientists, just that they are human.
I think you've misunderstood most of what I meant, maybe it's my fault. Not sure I can handle another long post.
BTW, I'm not saying anything bad about the scientists, just that they are human.
Post edited at 09:12
In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
It would be true to say I do not understand most of your last post.
> I think you've misunderstood most of what I meant,
It would be true to say I do not understand most of your last post.
In reply to johnj:
lol
> I was in Morzine on the day that they first made the TV announcement about the discovery of the Higgs boson, I've never seen a storm like that before, it looked like the Storm that was brewing up on the hill Cern way was out of Mordor a massive inversion sucking everything up into a black hole like vortex, and then the electrical storm which followed felt like a firework display at street level, and on some random coincidence I called into a local pub to get out of the rain and my cousin who I hadn't seen for a good while was sat there at the bar with his mate, I went and sat down with them to say hi, and it was like some random double take moment that they couldn't believe what they were seeing.
lol
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