Multiple Higgs and a pantheon of gods?

ML1
ML1
Joined: 20 Feb 05
Posts: 347
Credit: 86,469,166
RAC: 2,684
Topic 195177

Looks like the Tevatron researchers are trying to steal a lead on the LHC:

US experiment hints at 'multiple God particles'

... recent results from the LHC's US rival suggest physicists could be hunting five particles, not one. ...

Quite a good accessible article.

Keep searchin',
Martin

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

thaumielx72
thaumielx72
Joined: 2 Mar 11
Posts: 2
Credit: 370,930
RAC: 0

Multiple Higgs and a pantheon of gods?

tullio
tullio
Joined: 22 Jan 05
Posts: 2,118
Credit: 61,407,735
RAC: 0

There was an article around

There was an article around 1972 in a magazine called "Endeavor"by Emilio Segre', Nobel Prize winner, that explained that when physicists face a problem they ask for a bigger accelerator.When they get it it discovers new phenomena and the problem for which it was built is forgotten. Then they ask for an even bigger and costlier machine and so on. Two Italian physicists, Angelo Baracca and Silvio Bergia, have explained this in more detail in a book called "La spirale delle alte energie", Bompiani, 1975. The "spirale" refers both to a particle trajectory in a cyclotron and to the spiral of rising costs.
Tullio

ML1
ML1
Joined: 20 Feb 05
Posts: 347
Credit: 86,469,166
RAC: 2,684

RE: There was an article

Message 98387 in response to message 98386

Quote:
There was an article around 1972 in a magazine called "Endeavor"by Emilio Segre', Nobel Prize winner, that explained that when physicists face a problem they ask for a bigger accelerator.When they get it it discovers new phenomena and the problem for which it was built is forgotten. Then they ask for an even bigger and costlier machine and so on. Two Italian physicists, Angelo Baracca and Silvio Bergia, have explained this in more detail in a book called "La spirale delle alte energie", Bompiani, 1975. The "spirale" refers both to a particle trajectory in a cyclotron and to the spiral of rising costs.

Except...

What happens when we go beyond the power density of the Big Bang?... Is the LHC anywhere near that?

And are not the spiraling costs a function of how far ahead of current technology we rush?

Keep searchin',
Martin

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

tullio
tullio
Joined: 22 Jan 05
Posts: 2,118
Credit: 61,407,735
RAC: 0

LHC has reached 7 TeV so far,

Message 98388 in response to message 98387

LHC has reached 7 TeV so far, bur we are getting cosmic rays with fare greater energies both in the South and North hemispheres coming from "hot spots" so far not identified. I don't thing we are reaching the energy density of the Big Bang nor we shall reach it in the future. Physicists are already planning a Large Linear Collider more powerful and costly than LHC. The study of cosmic rays is again a bleeding edge of physics, as it was in the post war period in Italy, with the Testa Grigia Observatory near Mount Cervino (Matterhorn). Cosmic rays are cheap. Cheers.
Tullio

tullio
tullio
Joined: 22 Jan 05
Posts: 2,118
Credit: 61,407,735
RAC: 0

Let's hope the AMS goes in

Let's hope the AMS goes in orbit. It should count cosmic rays above the atmosphere for the first time.
Tullio

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
Moderator
Joined: 1 Dec 05
Posts: 6,578
Credit: 306,851,431
RAC: 188,409

I get the impression that the

I get the impression that the high energy physics people are caught in a recursive/interpretative loop. By that I mean : the meaning of such 'deep findings' depends sensitively upon the validity of understandings at a more superficial level. So one has to calculate the meaning of more basic/smaller phenomena while relying on human level/scale measurements. Reductionist questions breed reductionist answers. I don't know where, but I think a wrong turn has been made - probably within quantum mechanics and that entanglement puzzle - that has led to aspects of the current cognitive framework that could be misleading us. Then again it might just be that the world is built that way : it could well be an endless series of resonances of some fundamentally unknowable stuff that can never be completely defined from within the construct. Maybe it is 'turtles all the way down', or we are trapped like Astfgl with matters (in)conveniently arranged to perpetually delude ..... :-)

Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Rod
Rod
Joined: 3 Jan 06
Posts: 4,396
Credit: 811,266
RAC: 0

quote]I get the impression

Message 98391 in response to message 98390

quote]I get the impression that the high energy physics people are caught in a recursive/interpretative loop. By that I mean : the meaning of such 'deep findings' depends sensitively upon the validity of understandings at a more superficial level. So one has to calculate the meaning of more basic/smaller phenomena while relying on human level/scale measurements. Reductionist questions breed reductionist answers. I don't know where, but I think a wrong turn has been made - probably within quantum mechanics and that entanglement puzzle - that has led to aspects of the current cognitive framework that could be misleading us. Then again it might just be that the world is built that way : it could well be an endless series of resonances of some fundamentally unknowable stuff that can never be completely defined from within the construct. Maybe it is 'turtles all the way down', or we are trapped like Astfgl with matters (in)conveniently arranged to perpetually delude ..... :-)

The Culprit 'Decartes' :-)

I think I worked for Astfgl at one time:-)

'I think therefore I am is the most boneheaded assertion there every was..

There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
Moderator
Joined: 1 Dec 05
Posts: 6,578
Credit: 306,851,431
RAC: 188,409

RE: The Culprit

Message 98392 in response to message 98391


Yeah, good old Rene ! What a lad, great mathematician - broke the ancient mould and invented analytic geometry - but you could easily toss the rest into the bin.

Quote:
I think I worked for Astfgl at one time:-)


Yup, he exists with many cloned variants.

Quote:
'I think therefore I am is the most boneheaded assertion there every was..


"I think, therefore I am" is the ultimate recursive argument, self consistent and symmetric ( "I am, therefore I think" ) etc but utterly devoid of content. Assuming it's truth leads nowhere - without other axioms - leaving it out while retaining the other axioms is identical, hence it is superfluous. Thus conceptually equivalent to "I don't know".

Seriously, I reckon the QM 'paradoxical' entanglement issue is a key signal of our dissonance with underlying reality ( yes, I do believe there is an underlying reality ). Plus the concept of 'probability' which is quantified ignorance wall-papered over. I don't know how to resolve it but I reckon the direction to go in would involve a new area of maths to describe and regularise it. Methinks non-linear, non-commutative and non-intuitive .....

Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
Moderator
Joined: 1 Dec 05
Posts: 6,578
Credit: 306,851,431
RAC: 188,409

Has anyone read Bart Kosko's

Has anyone read Bart Kosko's "Fuzzy Logic"? Clever guy who re-jigged probability statements : instead of saying "over N measurements the probability of some quality/event/outcome is some fraction p ...." he says "the object exists as having the quality/event/outcome to some pth degree ..... ". Any duality is attributed to the object's base composition rather than floating through a succession of states which is then sampled upon measurement. The math is unchanged. This has a close parallel with the Feynman sum-over-histories approach - all roads are taken to some degree which one then summates to a weighted amalgam which is what is perceived.

Thus my fuzzy washing machine, apparently, sees my dirty clothing load as having all qualities ( to some proportion ) from utterly clean right across to absolute filth. Whereas QM would assign probabilities to states which have distinct observables and a selection/collapse occurs at measurement time. A subtle point for sure as the statistical expectations are the same with either program observed over a series of 'repeated' samples. Indeed that is probably why fuzzy logic was poorly received as it made no new predictions, thus the existing paradigm holds sway.

However it does highlight/contrast the concept of 'repeatable'. Does the probability idea merely amortize the unobservable/unknowable/unpredictable parameters - like a sideshow spinning wheel that we blindly interrupt on occasions to catch the prize of the moment - or does fuzziness truly rule and we just see different facets of a unified unchanging thing? Perhaps word play. Maybe not.

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) There is possible semantic blathering here. Instead of an 8 horse race with prior probabilities of a given single horse winning and the most likely one actualizing in the result, we have 8 horses whom have all won the race to some degree .... so 'winningness' is not bestowed at the moment of race completion but held forever by each nag.

( edit ) The difference b/w these approaches becomes acute when the favourite doesn't come in, with the dark horse in the field launching forward. What to say now? Bad prior probability assessments, meaning faulty assessment of 'form'? Statistical variation ie. 'bad' luck or Murphy's Law? A true change in underlying 'winningness' - a horse was nobbled, say. Would Fuzzy Logic stand it's ground then? What would Bayes say? Hmmmm .....

( edit ) I do commend Astfgl for his treatment of Prometheus ( eternally punished for stealing fire from the gods ). Instead of his liver getting picked over by a vulture every day - only to regrow each night - he had to listen to the bird describe it's haemorrhoid surgery. :-) :-)

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Rod
Rod
Joined: 3 Jan 06
Posts: 4,396
Credit: 811,266
RAC: 0

RE: Thus my fuzzy washing

Message 98394 in response to message 98393

Quote:


Thus my fuzzy washing machine, apparently, sees my dirty clothing load as having all qualities ( to some proportion ) from utterly clean right across to absolute filth. Whereas QM would assign probabilities to states which have distinct observables and a selection/collapse occurs at measurement time. A subtle point for sure as the statistical expectations are the same with either program observed over a series of 'repeated' samples. Indeed that is probably why fuzzy logic was poorly received as it made no new predictions, thus the existing paradigm holds sway.

However it does highlight/contrast the concept of 'repeatable'. Does the probability idea merely amortize the unobservable/unknowable/unpredictable parameters - like a sideshow spinning wheel that we blindly interrupt on occasions to catch the prize of the moment - or does fuzziness truly rule and we just see different facets of a unified unchanging thing? Perhaps word play. Maybe not.

I really don't want to get into the weeds on this, because I think that's part of the problem. I look at fuzzy logic as new approach at looking at solving a problem. Rather then the usual approach of classifying and quantifying the parameters of the what you 'think' you need to know to solve the problem. Look at the problem in a more indirect way and just develop a system that attends to the symptoms of the problem. The problem over time will take care of itself. I know I am using the wrong words.

There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.