Two of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) detectors, CMS and ATLAS, have seen excess photon pairs that hint at the existence of a previously unknown boson with a mass of about 1500 GeV [gigaelectronvolt], which is about 12 times larger than the mass of the Higgs boson. The excess photons turned up while searching through data looking for gravitons. By themselves the data are not very significant and would not have garnered much interest, but this becomes more interesting since both experiments saw these statistical bumps in the same place. The next round of data taking in March will be able to determine whether this particle really exists.
In addition to what they might have found, also of interest is what they haven't found:
Meanwhile, searches for particles predicted by supersymmetry, physicists' favourite extension of the standard model, continue to come up empty-handed. To theoretical physicist Michael Peskin of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, the most relevant part of the talks concerned the failure to find a supersymmetric particle called the gluino in the range of possible masses up to 1,600 GeV (much farther than the 1,300-GeV limit of Run 1). This pushes supersymmetry closer to the point where many physicists might give up on it, Peskin says.
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As seen back in December, there was a tantalizing hint of a boson more massive than the Higgs, which if true, would point to some new and very exciting physics. Unfortunately, the blip in the data does not appear to be holding up under the scrutiny of better statistics. When the potential particle was announced, 377 papers were thrown up on arxiv as would-be Einsteins set out to stake a claim in the new theoretical physics wilderness. The null result was presented at the biennial International Conference on High Energy Physics.
The null results also set up one of the more humorous situations at the meeting. Immediately following the talks in which experimenters said the purported particle didn't exist, five different theorists took turns explaining what the particle might be.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @03:49PM
Lose some weight Fatties!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @04:50PM
The Christie Boson
(Score: 2) by arulatas on Wednesday December 16 2015, @05:41PM
Boson not Bozo.
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 4, Funny) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 16 2015, @03:57PM
The boson remains unidentified because it's very sensitive about this issue and wishes we'd all just stop bugging it about all this.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday December 16 2015, @07:23PM
The boson invented Bitcoin. I'd hide in an incredibly high energy state as well if I knew the IRS was after me.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @04:01PM
OK, so it's incredibly heavy (even more heavy than the God particle). And it is found shortly before Christmas.
That allows only one logical conclusion: This must be the Santa particle.
I therefore predict that they won't find it in the data taken next March (they might instead find the Easter Bunny particle, though). I advice them to repeat their experiment in December 2016, then they should definitely find the particle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @04:23PM
Finally we'll be able to bury 90% of the remaining 10% of the supersymmetric models (If you think there was only one "supersymmetry" guess again - there were about 100, but most of them have been aborted).
What I want to know is when Nima Arkani-Hamed will eat his fucking hat. He's been promising he will for years, nearly a decade, and despite failure after failure - sorry, I mean "experimental results that do not support the prior conjecture" - he's never performed any of the pennance he claimed he would.
Burying hairbrained theorie - this is good science - long may it continue.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @04:57PM
Sorry, I can't decide from context whether you mean hare-brained or hair-braned theory. The latter sounds sufficiently string-y as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @05:10PM
Did anyone tell the pro-life people? ;-)
(Score: 4, Disagree) by gnuman on Wednesday December 16 2015, @04:35PM
This pushes supersymmetry closer to the point where many physicists might give up on it, Peskin says.
Considering that String Theory gave us nothing but a nice math exercise, I don't understand why physicists would even bother with it, unless it is just to look at the math. For laymen, String Theory just resulted in confusion of what a scientific theory actually is - a tested hypothesis. But I think people that thought up String Theory were so sure of it they put a wrong name on it! The String Supposition, and not even wrong, all that it turns out to be. (to be wrong, you need something testable, something String Supposition never provided)
Next on the block is Dark Matter and Dark Energy hypothesis - the Aethers of 21-st century. Never directly observed, but it "must be there" according to our current understanding of the universe. Dark Matter and Dark Energy is also examples of how something you repeat often enough gains traction as a fact, even in scientific circles, when in fact it was never directly observed.
The universe is more complex than we think it is. If it isn't, we are back to 1800s before QM and nuclear physics and how we had "known all physics" and it was just a matter of "better calculations" to determine everything!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @05:00PM
You have to start somewhere. Different theories/hypotheses are put into the hopper, and all poked and prodded to test them. Those that best match reality then rise to the top. If they still all seem unsatisfactory, such as being overly complicated or failing to match observation, time to get back to the Thinking Room. (New ideas are always welcome even if current models seem "good enough".) Aether was a decent theory of the time; I see NO reason to ridicule it. Einstein's are not always instantly available to save the day. Being wrong is part of science.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @05:02PM
Sorry, but I strongly object against putting string theory and dark matter/dark energy into the same pot.
String theory is pure mathematics with exactly zero evidence whatsoever.
Dark matter and dark energy is something which, when inserted into our equations, allows us to correctly describe observed phenomena which we cannot describe only with the observed matter and known laws. This is is hard evidence. Not proof, for sure, but it's currently the best we have, in the sense that no other hypothesis explains as much as dark matter/dark energy does.
Yes, it may turn out to be wrong one time. But that's what science is about. If you demand that science may only consider things known to be true, then you can just as well demand that we stop doing science. Because under those conditions, science is not possible. At all. If you have a theory that correctly describes observations not correctly described by only using established theory, then simply dismissing that theory without evidence against it is unscientific.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday December 16 2015, @05:19PM
If you demand that science may only consider things known to be true, then you can just as well demand that we stop doing science. Because under those conditions, science is not possible. At all. If you have a theory that correctly describes observations not correctly described by only using established theory, then simply dismissing that theory without evidence against it is unscientific.
Can I please read one, just one, SN article in the morning, without being reminded of the wackos running for US president (and their supporters)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @11:18PM
I think you forgot to drink your coffee, or you're making a joke that whooshed me... OR you've been a BOT this whole time and just got rolled :D
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @11:26PM
Dark matter and dark energy have no hard evidence that I've ever heard of. They are both concoctions to explain phenomena, similar to the Aether before our understanding leaped forward. They are just mathematical abstractions with a theoretical basis in reality. String theory has physical predictions; the vibrating string underlying all matter, etc. so I don't see it as so purely mathematical. Dark matter and dark energy are simply some correcting constants being thrown into an equation and people saying "that stuff must exist to make our equations work!". I'm not a string theory defender or anything, I just see a flaw in your reasoning.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 17 2015, @08:31PM
Actually, aether theory was a very different beast - as I recall it was born of the assumption that EM waves must be waves *in* something. It didn't actually explain anything, it just filled a gap we assumed existed. Contrast that with Dark Matter and Energy, which offer explanations for several observations which shouldn't be possible according to the rest of physics:
Dark Matter originally sought to explain the fact that the outer parts of galaxies spin *much* faster than the theory of gravity says they should - so either our theory of gravity is flawed at large distances, or the majority of the galaxy's mass is actually matter beyond the edge of the visible disc, which neither emits light, nor blocks light from more distant objects. It then gained more recent support as we found evidence of gravitational lensing around galaxies suggesting that there's far more mass present than is visible, as well as anomalies such as the bullet cluster where the gravitational lens has become disconnected from the visible mass. It is possible that it's actually our theory of gravity that's flawed - but you need some good counter-evidence to undermine a time-tested theory, and so far none of the competing gravitational theories have managed to accumulate any evidence to support them.
Dark Energy is even newer, and primarily seeks to explain the fact that the universe is not only expanding, but that distant galaxies appear to be accelerating away from each other an an ever-increasing pace. That requires some phenominal ongoing force to not only neutralize gravitational attraction, but actually reverse it. And phenominal forces over long distances and billions of years equals truly mind-boggling amounts of energy for which we see no other evidence. A.k.a. "Dark" Energy.
So basically we've got two really weird gaping holes in our scientific cosmology, holes over which we've slapped crude patches to say "this is what we expect the answer to look like, assuming all our other well-tested theories are correct" We've even clearly labeled our kludges as such, calling them "Dark", or unknown. Once we have an actual well-tested theory to explain one or both of those phenomena you can bet it'll get a less mysterious name.
(Score: 2) by http on Thursday December 17 2015, @09:40PM
The assumption that "that stuff must exist to make our equations work" exists, and searching for it, has been a successful one, and a driving force, in physics and chemistry for centuries. I highly recommend reading "The Neutrino" by Asimov. While it might seem dated (written in the 1960s, QCD is kinda skipped over) it explains much more concisely than I could why conservation laws are used by humans doing physics and chemistry, and how studying apparent violations of those laws keeps on leading us to new discoveries.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 2) by gringer on Wednesday December 16 2015, @05:51PM
The String Supposition, and not even wrong, all that it turns out to be. (to be wrong, you need something testable, something String Supposition never provided)
There's even a website devoted to that phrase:
Not Even Wrong [columbia.edu]
Ask me about Sequencing DNA [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @06:34PM
Many of the big daddies in top schools spent their career building up this house of hype, and aren't about to fess up anytime soon. They even resorted to bullshit like anthropic principle, multiverse, and trying to twist what it means to do physics. Hopefully, they'll be turfed out into retirement soon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @03:10AM
So, that postdoc of yours never turned into a tenure-track position, didn't it?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday December 16 2015, @07:24PM
Never directly observed, but it "must be there" according to our current understanding of the universe.
We never directly observed viruses, either. Until we did.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @09:17PM
uhm... you shouldn't equate supersymmetry to string theory.
they are quite different.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @10:58AM
Right, but try to tell that to string theorists. :-)
(Score: 2) by Covalent on Wednesday December 16 2015, @04:57PM
I'm assuming from the article / summary that this isn't a gluino (correct me if I'm wrong).
If so, then what is it? Does the standard model predict anything this heavy / energetic? If not, then does that indicate a crack in the standard model?
Facts people...I need some.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @05:08PM
An unknown particle. Or maybe just a statistical anomaly without any meaning. That's what they want to find out next year.
No. The Higgs particle was the last standard model particle to be found. You can say for sure that any new particle they may find is not predicted by the standard model.
What is "a crack in the standard model"? It certainly indicates physics beyond the standard model. But that doesn't imply that the standard model is wrong, just incomplete.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @06:00PM
short answer: they suspect it could be the graviton.
long answer: they don't know yet and they don't even know that there *is* something, there is just some discrepancy in their data (a bump as they call it) which could be explained as well by a new particle or by statistical noise. However, the Higgs boson was detected just that way in the beginning: it was but a bump in the data that could have disappeared as more experiments went on. Instead it was confirmed to be there. Nobel prize ensues. So, for now, they are collecting more date about that new bump before they can tell anything about it. And at these levels of energy, it will take a while.
Ars has a good article on all this: http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/12/first-high-energy-lhc-results-supersymmetry-still-dead-watch-for-gravitons/ [arstechnica.com]
(Score: 2) by Covalent on Thursday December 17 2015, @04:06AM
Thank you! Much more informative.
Graviton discovery would be a big deal! We are plumbing the depths here.
I thought it was interesting that there was no sign of dark matter here. If dark matter is a real thing (which it certainly seems to be), then it must be truly unusual if the LHC is not seeing any hints and all of the experiments searching for it are coming up blank.
Also it seems that dark matter occurs in places that are not exotic or high energy (like empty space) and despite this fact we still are nearly clueless as to its nature.
I hope I live long enough to see this but cracked. :)
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday December 17 2015, @06:13AM
Even if LHC is creating dark matter particles (if such a thing exists), it would be hard to tell. Since the only interaction would be gravity and the gravitational force of a single particle would be minuscule, they could only detect it by adding up the energy of all particles from a collision and seeing what's missing. Then they'd have to make sure it isn't neutrinos (which are hard to detect themselves).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @04:54PM
It's not a graviton. The graviton is expected to be a spin 2 massless particle. If it did have mass, then the range of effect of gravity should be short (like weak and strong forces, which have massive force carrier particles), whereas only gravity and photons (electromagnetic) have long distance effects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graviton [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by seeprime on Wednesday December 16 2015, @10:20PM
It's a statistical anomaly. It's not real. Yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @11:02AM
Disagree. We don't know yet whether it is real or just a statistical anomaly. But if we later find it to be real, it means it was real even before we found out (unless you believe the universe is not yet finished, and God makes up new particles on the fly when we start looking for them).
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 17 2015, @08:45PM
That line certainly seems to suggest that this particle is not a gluino, but can anybody offer an explanation as to why that is the assumption? Or was the statement possibly taken from before the new particle was detected?
It seems to me that "We just found some evidence suggesting there may be an unknown particle at 1500GeV" and "We haven't found any evidence for a super-massive particle whose mass could be up to 1,600Gev" are a bit mutually exclusive without some further information.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday December 17 2015, @11:28PM
The gluino would be a fermion, not a boson.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday December 18 2015, @07:23PM
Okay, fair enough. So, any idea how you determine whether a particle that has only *maybe* been detected a couple times, with a confidence level low enough to put it's very existence in serious doubt, can be conclusively categorized as one or the other? I assume it has to do with the ratio of decay products, but if you're barely getting a suggestion that it exists in the first place, how can you conclusively categorize its decay products distinct from the noise?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday December 18 2015, @07:54PM
I'm not a high-energy physicist, so I cannot tell for sure, but one possibility would be that the anomaly is only seen in bosons; any particle that decays only into bosons must be a boson itself (you cannot add up integers to obtain a half-integer).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.