{"id":4579,"date":"2012-07-12T15:51:34","date_gmt":"2012-07-12T22:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/?p=4579"},"modified":"2016-08-27T21:59:53","modified_gmt":"2016-08-28T04:59:53","slug":"we-dont-know-if-its-a-higgs-boson-yet-researchers-rush-to-claim-new-physics-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/we-dont-know-if-its-a-higgs-boson-yet-researchers-rush-to-claim-new-physics-ground\/","title":{"rendered":"“We don’t know if its a Higgs boson” – yet Theorists rush to claim new physics ground"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.” – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Gold

Gold Rush Prospectors<\/p><\/div>\n

Q: What’s the difference between a religious fanatic and an extreme science “enthusiast” ?<\/p>\n

A: I’m beginning to wonder.<\/p>\n

Neither seems to understand that there are boundaries to science.<\/p>\n

In the late 1840s there was a Gold Rush to get to California to claim your fortune; to merely dig your millions right out of the ground.<\/p>\n

Well, the difference between theory and practice is a lot bigger in practice than it is in theory. Thousands found nothing but fruitless hard work and literally lost their shirts.<\/p>\n

I’m seeing an analogous “Higgs Rush” – the current mad dash to publish a “theory<\/a>” (they are really at best only hypotheses<\/a>) before anyone else does – no matter how disconnected it may be to bedrock physics.<\/p>\n

Its exciting to have a new particle show up<\/a>, but its not a Higgs yet.<\/p>\n

Yet even though the head of one of the CERN “Higgs” experiments has said clearly<\/p>\n

“We don’t know if its a Higgs boson.” (Joe Incandela, CERN CMS Experiment Leader)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

now articles are showing up wholly based on the false assumption that a Higgs particle has been established !

\"Hugs<\/a>

Hugs Bison<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

“Before we try to explain something, we should be sure it actually happened.” –Ray Hyman<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s one “What if we could split the Higgs boson?<\/a>”<\/p>\n

Maybe false media headlines are responsible “Celebrations as Higgs boson is finally discovered<\/a>”<\/p>\n

What ever happened to responsibility and physical reality in physics ?<\/p>\n

Sure its exciting to have a new particle show up, but really ?<\/p>\n

Further reading:<\/p>\n

The Higgs boson, uncertainty, and the scientific method<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s the entire passage from Mark Twain<\/p>\n

“In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year.<\/p>\n

Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod.<\/p>\n

And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen.<\/p>\n

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

– Life on the Mississippi<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.” – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1) Q: What’s the difference between a religious fanatic and an extreme … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[13,20],"tags":[325,256,328,327,326,253],"class_list":["post-4579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-basic-science","category-particles","tag-gold-rush-prospectors","tag-higgs","tag-higgs-rush","tag-hugs-bison","tag-mark-twain","tag-new-particle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmologyscience.com\/cosblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}