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Remember the big event announced by mainstream media when science discovered a new particle called, the God Particle?
Well, mainstream media seemed to have failed to give a heads up on what happened next.
I didn't know it was a disappointment, until today.
https://www.gotquestions.org/God-particle.htmlThe "God particle" is the nickname of a subatomic particle called the Higgs boson. In layman’s terms, different subatomic particles are responsible for giving matter different properties. One of the most mysterious and important properties is mass. Some particles, like protons and neutrons, have mass. Others, like photons, do not. The Higgs boson, or “God particle,” is believed to be the particle which gives mass to matter. The “God particle” nickname grew out of the long, drawn-out struggles of physicists to find this elusive piece of the cosmic puzzle. What follows is a very brief, very simplified explanation of how the Higgs boson fits into modern physics, and how science is attempting to study it.
The “God particle” nickname actually arose when the book The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? by Leon Lederman was published. Since then, it’s taken on a life of its own, in part because of the monumental questions about matter that the God particle might be able to answer. The man who first proposed the Higgs boson’s existence, Peter Higgs, isn’t all that amused by the nickname “God particle,” as he’s an avowed atheist. All the same, there isn’t really any religious intention behind the nickname.
Well, mainstream media seemed to have failed to give a heads up on what happened next.
https://www.telegram.com/news/20160806/disappointing-physics-news-god-particle-discovery-was-mistakeEight months after raising hopes that they may have found an intriguing new particle that cannot be explained by the existing main physics theory, disappointed scientists are saying: Never mind.
It was just a statistical burp, not a breakthrough, researchers reported Friday.
Early unconfirmed readings of a new particle in December by physicists at the center, called CERN, set the physics world abuzz. Scientists there had discovered the Higgs boson or “God particle” in 2012, and two new readings from the Large Hadron Collider made it seem like they may had found a revolutionary new particle.
At a Chicago physics conference , Dave Charlton, another CERN chief scientific spokesman, said the additional data showed that what they had seen earlier was just a random “statistical fluke.”
I didn't know it was a disappointment, until today.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/opinion/particle-physics-large-hadron-collider.htmlThe Uncertain Future of Particle Physics
Ten years in, the Large Hadron Collider has failed to deliver the exciting discoveries that scientists promised.
In 2012, experiments at the L.H.C. confirmed the discovery of the Higgs boson — a prediction that dates back to the 1960s — and it remains the only discovery made at the L.H.C.
Before the L.H.C. started operation, particle physicists had more exciting predictions than that. They thought that other new particles would also appear near the energy at which the Higgs boson could be produced. They also thought that the L.H.C. would see evidence for new dimensions of space. They further hoped that this mammoth collider would deliver clues about the nature of dark matter (which astrophysicists think constitutes 85 percent of the matter in the universe) or about a unified force.
The stories about new particles, dark matter and additional dimensions were repeated in countless media outlets from before the launch of the L.H.C. until a few years ago. What happened to those predictions? The simple answer is this: Those predictions were wrong — that much is now clear.
The trouble is, a “prediction” in particle physics is today little more than guesswork. (In case you were wondering, yes, that’s exactly why I left the field.)
To date, particle physicists have no reliable prediction that there should be anything new to find until about 15 orders of magnitude above the currently accessible energies. And the only reliable prediction they had for the L.H.C. was that of the Higgs boson. Unfortunately, particle physicists have not been very forthcoming with this information. Last year, Nigel Lockyer, the director of Fermilab, told the BBC, “From a simple calculation of the Higgs’ mass, there has to be new science.” This “simple calculation” is what predicted that the L.H.C. should already have seen new science.