When we perform experiments, we always find something out, even if it is that we are pretty ignorant. One way to handle ignorance is to be wishy-washy. That is just what the folks at CERN did yesterday. They announced that they still don’t know if the Higgs boson exists—maybe by next summer. The Higgs has been given the “god” appellation because it is supposed to give all other particles mass. Trouble is, it is supposed to be “about 126 times heavier than a proton and 250,000 times heavier than an electron” (Overbye, 2011). Doesn’t look like we will see any of these fat guys in our electrons soon. Egads! Does this even make sense? Sounds a lot like math girls gone wild to me.
More from Overbye (2011): “The Higgs boson is the cornerstone and the last missing part of the so-called Standard Model, a suite of equations that has held sway as the law of the cosmos for the last 35 years and describes all of particle physics. Physicists have been eager to finish the edifice, rule the Higgs either in or out and then use that information to form deeper theories that could explain, for example, why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter, or what constitutes the dark matter and dark energy that rule the larger universe.
The particle is named for the University of Edinburgh physicist Peter Higgs…who suggested that a sort of cosmic molasses pervading space is what gives particles their heft. Particles trying to wade through it gather mass the way a bill moving through Congress gains riders and amendments, becoming more and more ponderous. It was Dr. Higgs who pointed out that this cosmic molasses, normally invisible and, of course, odorless, would have its own quantum particle, and so the branding rights went to him.”
As I pointed out way back in October (http://thescientificworldview.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-god-particle-does-not-exist.html), what gives particles mass is the fact that each particle contains other particles ad infinitum. This is in tune with the Eighth Assumption of Science, infinity (The universe is infinite, both in the microcosmic and macrocosmic directions). In contrast, the whole of modern physics is founded on finity, the indeterministic opposite, which assumes that the universe is finite, both in the microcosmic (e.g., Higgs boson) and the macrocosmic (BBT) directions. The days for the reign of finity are numbered.
It is nice that they have finally given up that old indeterministic idea that space is perfectly empty. Maybe they will rediscover aether particles, the constituents of electrons. At least those particles would be lighter than electrons, not heavier. Beats swimming through some Higgs goo just to get some rubbed off mass on your little particle body.
Note that Overbye has gotten the mainstream down, drawing the implications out to “dark matter” and “dark energy.” As we showed in UCT (Puetz and Borchardt, 2011), the missing dark matter is nothing special, just trillions of undetected planets running around without stars whose wobbles could give them away. You have to be pretty naïve to believe that all matter in the universe should be luminous anyway, or even that “dark energy” could exist. Energy is E=mc2, a calculation, for crying out loud. Energy neither exists nor occurs, it is a matter-motion term we require to describe the motion of matter. The placement of those two dark terms in mainstream speak shows that they think of “dark energy” as some type of entity separate from matter, a violation of the Fourth Assumption of Science, inseparability (Just as there is no motion without matter, so there is no matter without motion). You wouldn’t be a modern physicist if you didn’t believe that matter could be turned into pure, naked energy, whether white or dark (Borchardt, 2009).
The Times reporter did get this gem from Steven Weinberg: “It’s always a little weird when something that comes out of the mathematics in theoretical work turns out to exist in the real world. You asked me earlier if it’s exciting. Sure is.”
Sure is.
References
Borchardt, G. (2009). "The physical meaning of E=mc2 (http://www.scientificphilosophy.com/Downloads/The%20Physical%20Meaning%20of%20E%20=%20mc2.pdf)." Proceedings of the Natural Philosophy Alliance 6(1).
Overbye, D. (2011). Data Hints at Elusive Particle, but the Wait Continues (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/science/tantalizing-hints-but-no-direct-proof-in-search-for-higgs-boson.html?scp=3&sq=god%20particle&st=cse). New York Times. New York.
Puetz, S. J. and G. Borchardt (2011). Universal cycle theory: Neomechanics of the hierarchically infinite universe. Denver, Outskirts Press (www.universalcycletheory.com).