Happy Higgs Boson Day \o/

[Koki]

Not included in the Standard Model without the Higgs Boson.

That's the punchline; the whole point of the Higgs Boson is to give mass to particles because otherwise they can't even explain it in the Standard Model - after coming up with six quarks, six leptons and fife bosons the fuckers still can't answer why are you sitting on your ass right now instead of gently floating around your basement!

So hey, let's come up with another boson that does just that and nothing else. Well that's convenient!

I hope some day the whole Standard Model will be proven to be just a bunch of ad-hoc band-aid bullshit and I don't care how many years will that put the modern physics back.

[LarryG]

Ugly looking critter, ain't it?

[Nicker]

I hope some day the whole Standard Model will be proven to be just a bunch of ad-hoc band-aid bullshit and I don't care how many years will that put the modern physics back.

Ha ha ha... Poe-ki.

You can't be real. It wouldn't be fair.

[nbohr1more]

Anti-Gravity? = Unlikely

Real world application?

Look to those funny guys in bunny suits making highly purified Silicon slices with processes that are controlled down to the quantum level.

It wont be long until they find a use for this newly found precision...

[heywood]

BTW, everybody interested in this story should read The Theory of Almost Everything, probably the best book for laypeople on the standard model. Even if it's of course far from the final theory, the SM is still very special, and that book made a good case that it's one of the greatest and most successful creations of humankind, developed over half a century by 100s of the smartest researchers on the planet over their entire careers ... and even if parts of it have to be rewritten, it's going to stay around no matter what.

The fact we have to spend billions and billions of dollars and years of work to identify even the smallest data that would say something new about it (and even that is confirming predictions) I think is a testament that this theory is on the edge of every physical process that humans care about. It's a far cry from something like the aether theory, which just completely fell apart under scrutiny. There may come better & deeper theories to describe reality like Super-string Theory, but at that point we're getting so far from the everyday reality that humans can deal with that people still question whether it can ever be a science at all... If it can't, then SM plus a few tweaks may well stand on the bleeding edge of what we can hope to understand. I think that makes it special not out of hubris, but actually out of modesty. This may be as far as we can go, and we can feel privileged we got ourselves this far.

It's just another mathematical model. It explains and predicts a lot of observations, more than previous models. But like previous models it has flaws (e.g. hierarchy problem), it doesn't predict some other notable observations (e.g. matter/anti-matter asymmetry and neutrino properties) and it is at odds with some of our other models (e.g. the standard cosmological model).

It's like the periodic table, a model to classify stuff we've found. I don't see how you can attribute any religious significance to it. Or why you would want to.

[demagogue]

People can attribute religious significance to whatever they want to. Some people make coffee ritualistically, or garden or take a walk in the woods as a quasi-religious thing to tap into nature. People study quantum physics or general relativity or cosmology with a kind of religious wonder. So I don't know why not the Standard Model -- which is pretty much just the cutting edge of quantum physics. It may be "just a theory", and an untidy one at that, but it's also the most successful and expensive human artifact ever constructed -- and one not dedicated to making people fat or screwing them out of their savings or making terrible life decisions or destroying the environment like most other human institutions or artifacts are -- and it explains aspects of our universe to an astounding level of accuracy, so much you'd have to spend billions of dollars and wait years with a staff of 1000s to even find the most minor deviations.

You don't have to try to learn it with a sense of awe and wonder at the universe -- in fact one can live their life and not have a sense of wonder and awe for anything a die a bitter jaded human being if they want -- but you can, and I think it's as well spent on that as anything.

...............

Edit: I'll put it another way... I think when people have a sense of wonder at the universe, it's best expressed through some discipline, not just some nebulous "oh that tree is amazing. What a grand universe we live in!" But if you're studying these physics theories, or any great theory out there, I think it only brings that sense of wonder to life as you get deeper into it. It's not like it has to make them mystical or other-worldly or beyond criticism or even true in any special way, just that I appreciate the discipline and work to study something great and closer to the truth than a knee-jerk opinion.

I think a similar thing goes for great art or music and the discipline of good technique too. And after reading a few books, I appreciate the SM in particular and something special compared to what else is out there. As it is now, if you want to get as close to anything like the "Truth" of the universe as humans have ever gotten in their 100K year long sojourn, the SM has a special place. This is the leading edge of so much sacrifice and dedication humans have spent to understand our universe. When the ancients looked up at the stars and wondered "why", they were dreaming of a theory closer to this than what they could ever imagine. It's of course not there but where else are you going to look to get closer? I appreciate Superstring theory too, but it's just not there yet...

Edit2:

But like previous models it has flaws (e.g. hierarchy problem), it doesn't predict some other notable observations (e.g. matter/anti-matter asymmetry and neutrino properties) and it is at odds with some of our other models (e.g. the standard cosmological model).

... Implying that thinking about how to deal with the flaws & gaps & tensions isn't part of the discipline that makes studying the SM interesting & meaningful, or that the extra-SM observations and models can't be studied with a sense of wonder as well.