Physics Question Regarding Higgs Boson

[Scrustle]

I'm no physicist but I have spotted something which seems to me to be a problem with all this business in finding the fabled Higgs Boson particle. It seems to be a fairly obvious problem from what I can see so I think perhaps I'm missing something here. Are there any physics nerds here on The Escapist that can help me out?

The Higgs Boson is often called "the God particle", which pretty much sums up what I think it wrong with all of this. From how it seems to me what has happened is that the scientists have created their big impressive theory that is able to explain all of quantum physics, except for it to work this particle needs to exist, yet no one has ever detected or observed such a particle. So what they are doing is trying as hard as they can to find this particle so that their theory fits together nicely, when they aren't really sure it exists. Although it's now looking more and more likely that it does in fact exist, the method they have used to get to this point seems to share a whole lot with the "God of the gaps" fallacy. They've created an explanation but it has a hole in it which they filled with the Higgs Boson, kind of making it a "God of the gaps particle".

It seems completely contrary to the whole scientific method. Isn't it possible that even if this Higgs Boson exists, the theory they have built around it is totally wrong? It could have a completely different role in physics, but appear to behave like the theory dictates just because they have been looking so hard for it and only found it behaving in this one way. And the only reason it behaves that way is because they have set up a very specific environment for it to occur in. Couldn't it be that it actually behaves in a completely different way most of the time which have never detected, which completely contradicts all existing theories? Have they not considered any of these possibilities?

So what am I missing? It looks as if they have completely forgotten the whole "observation" part in the scientific method and jumped right on to creating a theory and then an experiment. Surely this can't be true. The people working on this are the greatest scientific minds alive today, so I must be missing something. Can anybody help? And like I said before, I'm not the most knowledgeable person about this kind of stuff. The little I know about quantum physics as it is completely baffles me. So if you can, please try and keep it simple.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Actually, it's only the press that calls it the god particle. The guy who that's attributed to actually called it 'the goddamned particle' because it's been a bugger to try and find. Besides, at the moment it's the most sensible theory we have; it fits in with the standard model, in a similar way that before many elements had been discovered, their masses and properties had been predicted by the periodic table. That's not to say we know it will act like we predict it does, but it's simply what a lot of people think is most probable.

 

[Jonluw]

The one quality a theory must have is that it can predict future events, provided the initial conditions are known.
What the people who discovered gravity did was observe the motions of objects in relation to eachother. They then devised formulas that could predict these movements with great accuracy.
Later, it was proven that the world is composed of a set of elementary particles. However, none of these particles were responsible for the mass of objects.
But if there was no such thing as mass, how could all the calculations regarding gravity be correct?
The logical conclusion is that there is a hole in our knowledge. A paricle we haven't discovered yet, that is responsible for mass. What science is doing is acknowledging that we don't know everything, and then devising a hypothesis as to what it is we don't know, and then looking for what we don't know.

The existence of the Higgs Boson is a hypothesis, but it is one upon which our entire understanding of physics hinges, so it is very likely to be correct. We just need to prove it.

Let me put it like this:
You've been assembling a jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces up 'till now fit together, and the image they compose makes sense.
However, there's a gap there. You're missing one piece. You can see from the gap what the piece must be shaped like, and you have a pretty good idea what the illustration on top of it would have to look like.
You can't find it though.
What, then, is the most reasonable course of action?
A) Searching for it more closely, going through your house with a vacuum cleaner with a stocking over the nozzle?
Or B) Declaring that the piece doesn't exist, and that you've been assembling the puzzle in the wrong way from the beginning, forcing yourself to tear the puzzle apart and start over?

Certainly, at some point, it will be correct to take the second route, option B, but we're not at that point yet.
We still haven't examined our "house" as closely as we could. The missing puzzle piece might just be stuck under the sofa.
So we build a giant particle accelerator and try to poke it out from under the sofa.

 

[Esotera]

It just saves time so that they don't have to invent all these theories in the case that they do find the Higgs Boson (which is very much expected by most physicists, I believe). Obviously if they don't find the Higgs boson, then it's back to square one, or more likely trying to figure out what went wrong at the LHC setup.

 

[Scrustle]

I think I need to clarify a bit. I'm not trying to say the Higgs Boson doesn't exist because no one has ever observed it, I'm asking whether we can really trust a theory which relies on assuming so much about something which no one has ever observed.

Let me put it like this:
You've been assembling a jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces up 'till now fit together, and the image they compose makes sense.
However, there's a gap there. You're missing one piece. You can see from the gap what the piece must be shaped like, and you have a pretty good idea what the illustration on top of it would have to look like.
You can't find it though.
What, then, is the most reasonable course of action?
A) Searching for it more closely, going through your house with a vacuum cleaner with a stocking over the nozzle?
Or B) Declaring that the piece doesn't exist, and that you've been assembling the puzzle in the wrong way from the beginning, forcing yourself to tear the puzzle apart and start over?

Certainly, at some point, it will be correct to take the second route, option B, but we're not at that point yet.
We still haven't examined our "house" as closely as we could. The missing puzzle piece might just be stuck under the sofa.
So we build a giant particle accelerator and try to poke it out from under the sofa.

I like your analogy so I'll run with it, but I still have some problems. What I'm trying to say is that how do we know that the puzzle we have so far is all correct if it relies on a piece we don't have? It may be true that the Higgs "puzzle piece" appears exactly the same as it does in reality, but what about the rest of the puzzle? Perhaps some of the pieces we have so far are in the wrong place, or perhaps some of the parts aren't even supposed to be in this puzzle. It may all still fit together in a way that makes sense, but how do we know that it's actually how reality looks? How do we know that the hole in the puzzle has to be filled by the Higgs, or that the Higgs can only fit in that place? Maybe in real life the Higgs piece fits somewhere completely different, and we need to re-arrange our puzzle if we want it to look the same as reality.

 

[Jonluw]

I think I need to clarify a bit. I'm not trying to say the Higgs Boson doesn't exist because no one has ever observed it, I'm asking whether we can really trust a theory which relies on assuming so much about something which no one has ever observed.

The current theories can be trusted because they consistently produce the correct results.
Whether the current theories are an accurate reflection of truth is a different matter entirely.

Let me put it like this:
You've been assembling a jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces up 'till now fit together, and the image they compose makes sense.
However, there's a gap there. You're missing one piece. You can see from the gap what the piece must be shaped like, and you have a pretty good idea what the illustration on top of it would have to look like.
You can't find it though.
What, then, is the most reasonable course of action?
A) Searching for it more closely, going through your house with a vacuum cleaner with a stocking over the nozzle?
Or B) Declaring that the piece doesn't exist, and that you've been assembling the puzzle in the wrong way from the beginning, forcing yourself to tear the puzzle apart and start over?

Certainly, at some point, it will be correct to take the second route, option B, but we're not at that point yet.
We still haven't examined our "house" as closely as we could. The missing puzzle piece might just be stuck under the sofa.
So we build a giant particle accelerator and try to poke it out from under the sofa.

I like your analogy so I'll run with it, but I still have some problems. What I'm trying to say is that how do we know that the puzzle we have so far is all correct if it relies on a piece we don't have?

Science doesn't know things as such. There is always the option that we're incorrect and the theories need revising.
What we do know is that the pieces fit well together and the picture they compose makes sense. And we know that the chances of that happening if we've assembled it wrongly are rather small.
Of course, there are still some problems. We've assembled a big part of the puzzle in the lower right corner, but we can't get that part to fit with the stuff we've puzzled together in the upper right corner.

It may be true that the Higgs "puzzle piece" appears exactly the same as it does in reality, but what about the rest of the puzzle? Perhaps some of the pieces we have so far are in the wrong place, or perhaps some of the parts aren't even supposed to be in this puzzle. It may all still fit together in a way that makes sense, but how do we know that it's actually how reality looks? How do we know that the hole in the puzzle has to be filled by the Higgs, or that the Higgs can only fit in that place? Maybe in real life the Higgs piece fits somewhere completely different, and we need to re-arrange our puzzle if we want it to look the same as reality.

If you want your theories to reflect "truth", yes. But that is not the purpose of a theory. Its purpose is to predict what is going to happen as we can observe it.
Of course, as our theories grow more detailed and eventually reach a point where they cover every observable phenomenon flawlessly, they will be indistinguishable from truth.
Chances are, if the pieces are arranged incorrectly, the theory's predictions will be wrong. And the arrangement of pieces we have going on right now adequately predicts every phenomenon we're observing. It may be that in the future that we will encounter a new phenomenon that the puzzle can't explain, and we will be forced to rearrange the pieces or find some new piece to accomodate this new phenomenon. That's how science progresses.
Maybe the piece needed to accomodate that particular phenomenon will happen to bridge the two fairly well-assembled halves of relativity and quantum physics.

To put it like this: What does it matter that a couple of pieces are in the wrong spots if the puzzle still has perfect predictive power?

 

[Hoplon]

You want something that really messes with your head? a single higgs, if it exists at all, has more mass than a hydrogen atom.

which is odd given it's what imparts the mass to the hydrogen atom in the first place.

 

[Scrustle]

To put it like this: What does it matter that a couple of pieces are in the wrong spots if the puzzle still has perfect predictive power?

Indeed. Very good answer. It would be preferable if scientific theory did exactly mirror reality, but I guess we can never really truly know reality. Getting in to some metaphysical shit there.

You want something that really messes with your head? a single higgs, if it exists at all, has more mass than a hydrogen atom.

which is odd given it's what imparts the mass to the hydrogen atom in the first place.

Mind = blown!

 

[Jonluw]

You want something that really messes with your head? a single higgs, if it exists at all, has more mass than a hydrogen atom.

which is odd given it's what imparts the mass to the hydrogen atom in the first place.

Does the electron, like, negate some of the mass of the proton or something?
And what about isotopes that contain neutrons?

 

[Hoplon]

Mind = blown!

Does the electron, like, negate some of the mass of the proton or something?
And what about isotopes that contain neutrons?

All I know is that the range of mass energy they are currently looking for the higgs in at the LHC is was more than the mass energy of most atoms.

hydrogen is at about 13.6 eV

they are looking for the Higgs above 114 MeV (mass energy's below that where ruled out by earlier accelerators)

 

[Nimcha]

To my knowledge, the Higgs boson has already been theoretically proven (as in, mathemetically). The guy at CERN told me as much when I visited there in 2006.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Hey?

You have a theory, and you set up an experiment to test the theory, and if it should be "proven" (or rather, fail to fail as yet), learn more about things.

Even if it should be "proven", it will undoubtedly be amended or abandoned some time in the future.

 

[SciMal]

You want something that really messes with your head? a single higgs, if it exists at all, has more mass than a hydrogen atom.

which is odd given it's what imparts the mass to the hydrogen atom in the first place.

I'm not up to snuff on my Higgs Boson, but it would make sense if the HB is supposed to be traveling practically lightspeed all the time. Measurements for the KE/PE of a hydrogen atom are done at STP - 1atm, 298k. Accelerating a proton to near-C does take quite a significant amount of energy, i.e. - it's usually only a few protons that gets fired around the LHC, and the LHC uses some pretty spectacular amounts of electricity to do it.

 

[Smooth Operator]

You are missing the part where science is not an absolute, it is a description of the world we figured out sofar, but we still only know so much.

All now well proven theories once started in purely theoretical physics, i.e. they were guessing the unobservable based on observable phenomenon, and it is the exact same thing with the Higgs Boson.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

No this not what happening at all. We have a theory of why things have mass which is what the Higgs Boson is more or less about and the only people who call it the "God" particle are pop science articles in the press. The man behind the particle detests this name.

Also this is exactly how science works.

 

[Cpu46]

Let me put it like this:
You've been assembling a jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces up 'till now fit together, and the image they compose makes sense.
However, there's a gap there. You're missing one piece. You can see from the gap what the piece must be shaped like, and you have a pretty good idea what the illustration on top of it would have to look like.
You can't find it though.
What, then, is the most reasonable course of action?
A) Searching for it more closely, going through your house with a vacuum cleaner with a stocking over the nozzle?
Or B) Declaring that the piece doesn't exist, and that you've been assembling the puzzle in the wrong way from the beginning, forcing yourself to tear the puzzle apart and start over?

Certainly, at some point, it will be correct to take the second route, option B, but we're not at that point yet.
We still haven't examined our "house" as closely as we could. The missing puzzle piece might just be stuck under the sofa.
So we build a giant particle accelerator and try to poke it out from under the sofa.

ClapClapClapClapClapClapClapClapClapClapClapClapClapClap

I have to say this is one of the best explanations I have ever heard to explain the Higgs and really the Scientific Method in general. I shall have to remember this for later discussions I have with people.

 

[Jonluw]

Let me put it like this:
You've been assembling a jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces up 'till now fit together, and the image they compose makes sense.
However, there's a gap there. You're missing one piece. You can see from the gap what the piece must be shaped like, and you have a pretty good idea what the illustration on top of it would have to look like.
You can't find it though.
What, then, is the most reasonable course of action?
A) Searching for it more closely, going through your house with a vacuum cleaner with a stocking over the nozzle?
Or B) Declaring that the piece doesn't exist, and that you've been assembling the puzzle in the wrong way from the beginning, forcing yourself to tear the puzzle apart and start over?

Certainly, at some point, it will be correct to take the second route, option B, but we're not at that point yet.
We still haven't examined our "house" as closely as we could. The missing puzzle piece might just be stuck under the sofa.
So we build a giant particle accelerator and try to poke it out from under the sofa.

ClapClapClapClapClapClapClapClapClapClapClapClapClapClap

I have to say this is one of the best explanations I have ever heard to explain the Higgs and really the Scientific Method in general. I shall have to remember this for later discussions I have with people.

Thanks.
Sorry, I don't really know how to respond to compliments on forums (Well, I suck at that in real life as well, but whatever).
I feel like I come off as a self-aggrandizing asshat if I respond, but I also feel ignoring a reply is rude.
:/

 

[savandicus]

Sorry if this sounds a bit rude but you seem to lack the most basic understanding of how science words.

Hypothesis -> test -> results -> Accept/reject Hypothesis

The higgs is a hypothesis, they are testing it to try and prove/disprove it.

There actions are completely consistant with the scientific method. If you did it in the way that you're suggesting then you have no idea what sort of experiment to do because you haven't thought about what you're trying to find first.