Theories and Higgs

Can you see it?

Does the Higgs boson exist? is it really as important as people make out? or is it just hype? Is it really God's particle? If it is God's particle then does its existence prove the existence of God?

Physics is all about trying to explain how the universe works. We come up with an idea, try to find an experiment to see if the idea stands up to testing and if it does it gives us some clue to how the universe might work. Sometimes its the other way round. We find a result that we weren't expecting and then we try and come up with an idea to fit.

This is what is called scientific process and, by its nature, means that we are going to be wrong most of the time. Why? because we don't have all the evidence, and just like any detective story, a single piece of evidence can turn the entire story/theory on its head.

Some of the greatest discoveries about gravity were made by Newton back in the 1600's. He managed to explain how gravity behaves. Was he correct? No. But his observations and ideas were so good that it took ages to realise that they were wrong and that they are very good approximations. Does that make them invalid and useless? Absolutely not. They are an amazingly accurate description of gravity and only fail at the extremes of gravity. Newtonian mechanics were more than enough to send man to the moon.

Could Newton have done better? I don't think he could. He was already pushing the boundaries of what we knew and his insights were, and still are, amazing.

The early models of the atom were also completely off the mark. At the turn of the last century there were still some scientists arguing that atoms didn't actually exist. They were just an abstract mathematical model. It was Einstein who realised that the evidence of atoms had actually been discovered almost 80 years earlier. All of the scientist at that time had missed the clue except him.


Our understanding of magnetism, electricity and light was initially nonsense. For many it is with hindsight that we see the truth. Then we look back and are amazed that they could have taken so long to realise this or that, it seems so obvious now! Yet, at the time, given the evidence, many theories are justified. They are also completely wrong!

Making best guesses using insufficient evidence is bound to the guess being wrong. Does this mean we shouldn't bother? Of course not. But it does mean that we should always bare in mind that theories are just that. Chances are they are built on insufficient data and probably miss that vital bit of information that will give some bright spark that Eureka moment.

Some theories prove to be better than others and some have greater longevity. Relativity is still going strong. Quantum electro dynamics, the theory of the interaction of light and matter as been shown, by experiment, to be fantastically accurate. The standard model gives us the theory of the universe so far and this is were Higgs comes in. There are others, many, but are they right? Are any of them right? Personally I expect not, but they will do until we find something better. Owt is better than nowt as they say in the stranger parts of England.

The discovery of sub atomic particles opened up a new branch of physics which promises to give us a deeper insight into the workings of the universe than ever before. Particle accelerators have got bigger and bigger giving us a mass of "new particles" to wonder about.

Out of this work theories were developed to try and explain all this, one of them being the Standard model.  This was not the work of a single man, although there have been significant contributions by individuals, it is more of a team effort, much as the work to discover the particles is a massive team effort at places like CERN and the Tevatron accelerator out in the US (Before it closed down in Sept 2011).

The Standard Model has made a number of predictions about what should exist. This is not new to science. In fact many great theories not only explain what is being seen but also what may be seen. Dirac proposed that there must be antiparticles way before they were discovered. Mendeleev, of the periodic table, was able to predict the existence of elements before they were found. Others used Newton's work on the motion of planets to predict the existence of Neptune before it was discovered. These are great moments in science.

So the Standard Model predicts the existance of this fairly large particle (thought to have the mass of about 130 protons) that has yet to be found. If it is found then it will add new strength to the validity of the theory. If it is not then it will raise doubts. Even if it is not found the theory still as value. Just in the same way that Newtons. Everything that it has predicited that was found to be true is still true. The moon didn't suddenly start misbehaving as soon as Einstein point out that Newton may be wrong.

Any new theory that comes along to replace the Standard Model needs to explain all the things the standard model got right and then give new answers to the areas were the Standard Model went wrong.

So Higgs particle, what about that then? Is it the God particle? Nah, that was just a name dreamed up by marketing folk to help flog books, nothing more. People, not just physicists, love to find things out, to try and discover truth and God is a big subject. Stick the word God on the front of a science book and it's sales improve dramatically.

Find or no find, it will give us a better understanding of the universe. But will it prove or disprove God? Of course not. There is NO scientist of science book that can prove or disprove the existance of God.

So, after a year or more of particle smashing, why haven't we found it yet?

One of the challanges with the Higgs particle is that it even if it does exist. It does not do so for very long. It's life time is so short as to be impossible for the human mind to comprehend and also to short to measure directly, and probably always will be. So what we have to do, is not look for the Higgs directly, but evidence of its having been. So we are looking through the aftermath trying to figure out the nature and cause of the devistation and hoping that what we find will lead us to the conclusion that only 1 type of bomb could have caused what we see and that bomb was a Higgs boson.

It is more complex than this though, because it is not a single explosion. We are not looking at the result of two single protons colliding. The results are of billions of collisions, billions of little bombs going off and it is a question of trying to sort through all of these to find the elusive Higgs.

Are they going to find it over at CERN. The real answer is that we don't know. Does it matter if they do, or they don't? Well, if they do then it strengthens the Standard model, if they don't, it definitely puts a dent in the model. In a way, from the Physics point of view it does not really matter. If it isn't found then new theories will evolve. If it is found then Higgs must be up for a Nobel prize.

My real concern is that the Standard Model does not explain things like dark energy (but this could easily be because dark energy may not exist!). It does not give a full theory of gravitation. It cannot explain dark matter, nor something called a neutrino oscillations. May be our interpretation of these things is wrong and it is the Standard Model that is correct. Who's right? who's wrong? time will tell of course, which is a strange saying, given what we know about time!

Lets face it, at the time I am writing this we are still not sure if a neutrino can travel faster than the speed of light which would totally blow the lid on just about everything! How exciting would that be?

What do I think about Higgs boson? In a way I would like there to be a particle so that Prof Higgs gets the Nobel prize. Whether he wanted it or not, the search for the Higgs boson has now, publically, defined his career. If it is not found then it would appear that his "lifes" work was a failure. Which is not the case because he wrote the paper over 50 years ago, but such is history and public perception.

From a physics point of view, I don't think it exists and I have a small concern that a "find" will be misinterpretation of the data rather than a geniune find. This may result in many wasted years of theoretical development because  people do not do research in areas now considered closed or unimportant, much in the same way that General Relativity was ignored.

My predictions for the year 2012 at CERN... no Higgs and faster than light Neutrinos.

UPDATE: looks like there may be a Higgs and neutrinos don't travel faster than light! Prof Higgs got the Nobel Prize, well done that man.