Horizon on the Higgs tonight

This is the Higgs boson which is not actually known to exist? So what can they say about it?

Neither does the Yeti or Allian beings , it doesn't seem to stop a lot of talk about them or the search for them.

Well, I guess they will explain why scientists think it might exist. They will explain the significance of certain things if it does exist and the significance of things if it dosn't exist. And they will explain what they are doing to discover whether it does exist or doesn't exist.

And since you and I are paying for whatever they are doing (well, I guess we are somehow or other), it would be nice to know what benefits it will bring to mankind whatever the outcome.

I doubt if we will get the opportunity to vote whether to continue funding this project.

Cheers

Don

Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Dark Flow.

MY ARSE

That's a bit philistine, Don. I think they're just following a fundamental human need... to know. That is the "benefit", as you call it.

Anyway, I'd rather pay for the LHC than Trident or bailing out banks or subsidising tax-dodging individuals and corporations.

You misunderstand. The Higgs boson is, in the more advanced mathematical models of the sub-atomic world, the posited force-carrying particle which (to simplify things) confers mass. It can be described mathematically, but so far one has not yet been "seen". If a Higgs particle is found, then an enormous amount about our universe can be explained.

Simples!

You should see a doctor if the matter flowing out of your arse is that dark.

So you're saying that it's Fatcat's arse that is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate?

Universe expanding.

MY ARSE

So, you're saying that the Big Bang came out of your arse?

When I've had a chicken phall. Yes.

Keep up with the times. The universe is now moving towards one region in space.

"That's a bit philistine, Don. I think they're just following a fundamental human need... to know. That is the "benefit", as you call it."

Kevin,

If one group of people is paying others, then the funders are entitled IMHO to have the perceived benefits explained. If that is purely "knowledge", then say so. No need to apologise. A surprising proportion of us might be quite happy to pay for "knowledge".

Cheers

Don

I doubt they'll admit it's and an astronomically expensive "clutching at straws"

OK to all the above, each to his own.

My angle is we either work on the leading edge stuff the average human cannot comprehend or we stay on the farm & grow corn.  In the grand scheme of things the cost is not that great. 

It was a fascinating program & it did manage to explain some of it in terms that I could understand.  

I have said many times that the LHC is a criminal waste of money that will produce very little benefit to anyone other than than the scallywags who built it and work there - the whole project was 'jobs for the boys' and a desperate attempt to prove a hopeless ill-conceived theory. A few weeks a go a scientist at CERN reported that the search for the Higgs boson was 80% complete without so much as a hint of its existence. Imagine 80% complete and they have found nothing!

Recently other scientists have hinted that they have found some exciting evidence but reading the press releases and reading online academic commentaries I discover they have found nothing but suggestion of hints of something which may or may not be a hint of something but this is controversial and it will take months or years to interpret the 'wealth of valuable data' using high powered computers and number crunching and other slights of hand at the end of which they will find nothing but they will all say it was very important and money well spent etc. They are in the process of getting as much TV time for their media physicists so they can impress the masses with their genius and avoid blame. They have hoodwinked the public. They will continue to do so. Science and religion - not so far apart I think. 

I sometimes am amassed that the pseuds around here seem to have watched a different programme to me!

If Horizon is less watchable than programme X then why not watch that instead.

Seemed to be a lot of "mute" people talking, maybe others were so busy slagging off them and the programme to hear?

Expensive project? Yes. I guess so was sending sailing ships to the new world , the space programme and many others that may not have an obvious benefit, ( especially opt 1  ), but that's how we learn.

Man 1 "What benefit will the wheel bring?"

Man2  "I don't know but h give me several billion corn cobs and I'll research it."

Man1 "No it's too expensive, and you can't explain it clearly"

The wheel was an invention rather than a discovery and had a clear utility which did change the world.

The Higgs Boson is a theoretical construct which might or might not exist. The world will not change whether it does or not.

Not so fast. Who knows?

Take quantum physics. The world of electronics is now largely dependent on a thorough working knowledge of quantum physics. These quantum theories were quite (and remain) very abstract (and in some cases controversial?) but that doesn't make them any less useful in predicting the behaviour of the natural world at very small scales and therefore essential to the design of our ever-shrinking electronic circuits. No cellphones , LCD TVs or personal computers without it. By some measures, quantum physics is the most successful theory ever devised for predicting the natural world.

Even think about gravity. The fact that our actual understanding of how it works is limited doesn't mean we can't use science to model it and make very precise predictions of how things with mass wil behave under its influence.

If the LHC confirms the Higgs Boson, then that reinforces our understanding and guides further research. If it does confirm its existence not then that perhaps leads us down another path. Understanding is always better than ignorance. Knowledge better than faith.

Incidentally, I was at a party in Oxford a few years back and struck up a conversation with an experimental physicist who was working on the design, construction and installation of a certain type of detector for the LHC. She said to me that the experimental physicists actually wanted to disprove the existence of the Higgs Boson, whereas the theoretical physicists that had predicted it, obviously wanted it confirmed. She explained that disproving it would reinforce the value of experiments, whereas simply confirming the theory would make the experimental side less relevant.

Quantum physics seeks to explain what already happens it does not make it happen.

Swooosh!

Indeed. But being able to explain things that already happen very often allows one to make other, new things happen.

The total cost of the LHC project so far is, I believe about £7bn. That's actually not bad for what is the biggest and most complex machine ever built, and which may unearth some things, the benefit of which we can only begin to imagine.  It's a punt, I agree with you, but one worth taking IMO.

In the UK alone we spend £14bn a year on fags and cigars. Now that is a criminal waste of money - and I speak as a smoker.

Whatever any individual thinks about the cost of the LHC, ...

In the UK alone we spend £14bn a year on fags and cigars. Now that is a criminal waste of money - and I speak as a smoker.

This statement is simply a matter of opinion as well - though a conflicted one. And happens to be one where my opinion diverges!

How can pleasure be a waste of money? Were we not put on the Earth to at least enjoy a few simple pleasures from time to time? Okay, it is good if that pleasure can come within one's possible expenditure, but thereafter it is nobody else's business. Not even doctors and other so called experts.

ATB from George

I know what you mean George. I was merely declaring an interest (as all good journalists - or in my case, ex-journalist, old habits dying hard  - must).

A pack of Lucky Strike in London is now about £7.50, and I smoke about 15 to 20 a day. That means I spend about £50 a week on fags, a sum that might be better spent elsewhere; and of course there is a reasonable chance that it may kill me one day. Nevertheless, I persist in my habit, despised as it is these days, because I really enjoy it. Non-smokers will not understand, but smoking really is one of life's great joys.

I think it was Oscar Wilde who called smoking the most perfect of pleasures - irrational, addictive and all-too-brief but exquisite nevertheless.

Spending all that money on a machine to find something that might not exist is also irrational (if perhaps not as physically pleasurable as smoking a cigarette) but given our species' desire to find stuff out - the thing which has driven us on to our greatest achievements - seems to me both logical and justifiable.

As I've already said, I find many of the objections to the LHC (solely) on grounds of its cost rather philistine. As a species, we waste far more money on much worse things and it would be more worthwhile focussing energies on those rather than a science project which may one day - perhaps long after we are all dead, granted - reap unimaginable benefits for all mankind.

Dear Kevin,

I think we agree totally. Those who plant tress [smokers or not] will not be the ones who reap the rewards!

ATB from George