CERN discovers FTL particle (possibly)

  On 7/4/2012 at 2:56 PM, YO303 said:

.. and all of the sudden everybody on my Facebook is interested in physics. Today they act like Stephen Hawking, fucking ridiculous .. they are fucking dimwits !!!!.

 

Anyways, this is a great humankind archivement and i bet physicist are really excited about the discovery. The commoners will have to wait a decade or two to see any technologies that might spawn from this research.

They mentioned in the press conference that there's already been a tons of R&D when they built the collider and spin-offs from this research is probably on the way soon. To build a state-of-the-art particle collider isn't something you build from parts you get from the local hardware store, you need to plan, develop and engineer completely new technology and materials that will meet extreme quality standards and precision. Not to mention the computing infrastructure needed to handle the petabytes of data that is collected and processed. People seem to forget that part of the equation and think that the only usable results are these weird particles they are trying find. Someone asked about the return of the investments and the director said that for every one euro invested has returned 3.5 times.

Very exciting

  On 7/4/2012 at 4:11 PM, Rubin Farr said:

Very exciting

Oh right, cool, thanks!

Could you please let me know what I should be excited about so I can be excited too?

the possibility of new physics transcending what we understand about the universe today, possibly leading to some kind of unified field theory leading to the manipulation of matter at the quantum scale, which in turn could lead to a large amount of the traditional science-fiction tropes (replicators, deep space travel, free-energy etc) being realised within a few decades.

Could though?

I know I'm cynical and all. But I don't see any hoverboards yet, so I'm reserving excitement. It's more likely we'll tear the fabric of reality and destroy everything in the process.

2012

Can anyone point me out a couple of useful links - readings or other, but i am more capable of extracting information from images - that can give me a deeper understanding of all this? I can understand how the Higgs boson is the particle that gives mass to other particles, which seems to be the main discovery here, but i still need to understand it from a pratical point of view. How can this be applied in real life? What will or could this change from now on, if confirmed to be true?

  On 7/3/2012 at 4:39 AM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

i miss babar

neutrinos don't

  On 7/4/2012 at 5:01 PM, BCM said:

the possibility of new physics transcending what we understand about the universe today, possibly leading to some kind of unified field theory leading to the manipulation of matter at the quantum scale, which in turn could lead to a large amount of the traditional science-fiction tropes (replicators, deep space travel, free-energy etc) being realised within a few decades.

If it does't happen in my lifetime i don't care.

possibility of higgs boson: 12 page thread on watmm

boson discovered: watmm stops caring

The possibility of a FTL particle was more exciting because it would shatter our current knowledge of physics. Discovering the Higgs Boson just confirms what we already know.

  On 7/4/2012 at 5:19 PM, Super lurker ultra V12 said:

  On 7/3/2012 at 4:39 AM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

i miss babar

 

neutrinos don't

fucking lol.

i wish i was smart enough to understand any of this. quantum physics is just mind blowing when you think about it

This announcement is just fucking massive in its implications.

133 times more massive than science has ever been before

I feel excite...but I'm still not sure what it's about. All I know is, in your FACE gravity, we saw your junk. And called it God.

So what happens to general relativity now? Is it now incorrect?

what if they discover new particle, called...SUPER particle??? just kidding Aprail Fool!!!!

  On 7/4/2012 at 8:51 PM, sergeantk said:

So what happens to general relativity now? Is it now incorrect?

Has nothing to do with this. That said, getting GR to work with QM is the next nut to crack, among hundreds of other things we have no clue about. But it's a start.

What the show Universe on youtube, it's a good start.

hokum posted this earlier this year, it's really informative if you're interested in thinkin about star stuff http://forum.watmm.com/topic/73497-astronomy-addicts/page__hl__astronomy

the whole video series:

this is what it's all about

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFKvgo7q6lw

Through the Wormhole is great for explaining things in layman's terms.

  On 7/5/2012 at 12:38 AM, Mcdergbit said:

this is what it's all about

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFKvgo7q6lw

you guys do realize that this really doesn't change anything. the whole point of physics is to challenge what we think is true now. Hence why most shit is Theories and not laws. Physics is all about change. so really this is no big deal. it was going to happen at one point or another. we will still use Einsteins equations and theories cause they are pretty spot on.

and you know when Einstein made his claims it didn't really change anything at the time either. it was just another stepping stone. we used it to progress, not change anything. Physics is a straight line. when we prove an old theory "wrong" we don't go back and change everything that was ever written about it. we simply continue forward with the new found knowledge. the real "change" that this discovery will make will happen 20-30 years down the line. aka, it advances, it doesn't change. thats the whole point of Science. if it wasn't then we'd still be banging stones with our faces.

  On 7/4/2012 at 3:10 PM, Squee said:

Will this make Prometheus better?

It would be nice if you'd stop writing as if you're a spokesperson for science...

"physics is a straight line," wat? Not really.

  On 7/5/2012 at 1:34 AM, luke viia said:

It would be nice if you'd stop writing as if you're a spokesperson for science...

 

"physics is a straight line," wat? Not really.

and what i mean, is that we don't go back and say "hey, all your shit that you did was pointless and useless now." if it wasn't for the discoveries back then we wouldn't be where we are today. basically, we can only go forward. never backward.

like the Edison quote “We now know a thousand ways not to build a light bulb”. even though he failed so many times it was never a step back. only forward.

hopefully that makes more sense.