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- Mystery Meteorite: The case for (and against) a rock from Mercury
- Hard Times for Theorists in a Post-Higgs World: The Large Hadron Collider’s big success leaves no clear avenue for new physics
- In the Eye of the Tiger: Global spread of Asian tiger mosquito could fuel outbreaks of tropical disease in temperate regions
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Contents
- Infection time: Disease is more severe when it hits in the morning, at least in mice
- Explainer: Our bodies’ internal clocks: Biological clocks determine hunger, sleepiness and other daily rhythms
- Flu in the air: Germs tiny enough to pass through surgical masks may cause half of all cases
Web edition: July 3, 2012
Updated 1 p.m. EDT July 3
A video that was briefly made public on the CERN website July 3 confirms that the European physics lab has discovered a new particle — most likely the long-sought Higgs boson.
"We've observed a new particle ... we have quite strong evidence that there's something there" with a mass roughly 130 times the mass of the proton, Joe Incandela, spokesman for the CMS experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, says in the video, which now resides in a password-protected part of the lab's website. "This is the most massive such particle that exists, if we confirm all of this — which I think we will."
CERN officials have scheduled a major announcement on July 4 that is increasingly expected to declare the search successful.
CERN spokeswoman Corinne Pralavorio says the video was one of several made to cover different possible scenarios of a Higgs announcement and was not supposed to have been posted online. "Even we in the press office do not know what they are going to announce tomorrow," she said on July 3.
"It may in the end be one of the biggest discoveries, or observations, of any new phenomenon that we've had in our field in the last 30 or 40 years," Incandela says in the video. "When we say we've observed a particle, it means we've just got enough data to say that it's definitely there and it's very unlikely to go away," Incandela says. "We then need more data to start to ascertain its characteristics, what are its properties."
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If theories can avoid any predictions whatsoever (e.g., string/brane theory), or if theories can arbitrarily "adjust" their ersatz "predictions" (e.g., the standard model, especially QCD; supersymmetry; "WIMP" dark matter; etc.), then you do not have testable science. You have pseudoscience.
Albert Einstein showed many times how theories of principle can make definitive predictions that are prior, feasible, quantitative, non-adjustable and unique to the theory being tested. General Relativity is the archetypal example. That is what science aspires to, not fudged "model-building" which can only be viewed as temporary constructs that beg to be replaced by theories of principle.
We need to be less credulous. We need to demand theories of principle that can make and pass definitive predictions.
Robert L. Oldershaw
://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Fractal Cosmology
Discrete Scale Relativity
1. It appears that the di-photon decay channel is at least a factor of 2 higher than "Standard Model" predictions.
2. It also appears that the WW decay channel is completely missing in the LHC data, which should not be the case at all!
Are new epicycles going to be required to get the "right" answer?
Do theoretical particle physicists want the "Higgs Mechanism" so badly that they have lost scientific objectivity?
Sorry for asking inconvenient questions, but someone must and few seem inclined to do so.
Robert L. Oldershaw
Discrete Scale Relativity
...://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Interaction and supersymmetry, particles of inexplicable but amazing research.
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