{"id":3508,"date":"2009-03-17T10:14:22","date_gmt":"2009-03-17T10:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2009\/03\/17\/the-higgs-boson-still-not-here\/"},"modified":"2009-03-17T10:14:22","modified_gmt":"2009-03-17T10:14:22","slug":"the-higgs-boson-still-not-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2009\/03\/17\/the-higgs-boson-still-not-here\/","title":{"rendered":"The Higgs Boson: Still Not Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was busy with other stuff when this hit the blogs, but I did want to at least comment in passing on Fermilab’s announcement that it still hasn’t found the Higgs Boson. Detailed commentary is available from Tommaso Dorigo<\/a> and John Conway<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you’re not a physicist, or even just not a particle physicist, it might seem a little surprising that “We still haven’t found the Higgs” is worthy of a press release, let alone actual excitement. The important thing about the result is that they have been able to say (relatively) definitively that the Higgs boson does not<\/strong> exist in a certain range of masses. Since they don’t actually know the mass of the particle they’re looking for, this represents progress. The process of looking for new physics is not just a matter of waiting for that “Eureka!” moment when a big signal jumps out of the noise. It’s also about carefully and systematically excluding parameter ranges from the search– essentially, measuring nothing with greater and greater precision.<\/p>\n

You might be saying “Boy, I bet that takes a special type of personality…” and yeah, you’re probably right. I know I couldn’t do it. It’s always good to be reminded that scientific progress doesn’t always come with a “Wow!” or even a “Boink!”<\/a>, but sometimes a quiet “That didn’t work, either.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was busy with other stuff when this hit the blogs, but I did want to at least comment in passing on Fermilab’s announcement that it still hasn’t found the Higgs Boson. Detailed commentary is available from Tommaso Dorigo and John Conway. If you’re not a physicist, or even just not a particle physicist, it… Continue reading The Higgs Boson: Still Not Here<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-experiment","category-physics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}