Alice in Wonderland Physics: BLIP: The "Boson Boys" Return: CERN At It Again With Alleged Invisible Massless Particle That "Acquires" Mass in an Invisible Higgs Field

TIME, Real and Imaginary 

An Allegory by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

ON the wide level of a mountain's head

(I knew not where, but 'twas some faery place),

Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread,

Two lovely children run an endless race,

A sister and a brother

This far outstripp'd the other;

Yet ever runs she with reverted face,

And looks and listens for the boy behind:

For he, alas! is blind!

O'er rough and smooth with even step he pass'd,

And knows not whether he be first or last.  

via Bartleby.com, Great Books Online

The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900

Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919

__________

We found another one of those "bosonic" announcements in the news today by the "boson boys". Here is a picture of what can only be regarded to be absurd "bosonic string theory" - i.e. the Universe as sort of like a sow's ear.

They are at it again with the alleged Higgs Boson, determined to find what they want to find, masterfully tweaking, shifting, adjusting, and combining data sets of several experiments, and now once again alleging the find of an "invisible" particle faster than the speed of light:

CERN Confirms Existence of a Particle Consistent With Higgs Boson

Here's the theory -- an allegedly invisible massless particle, the Higgs Boson, moves through an allegedly invisible Higgs Field and acquires "mass".
[This could be just a form of cosmic stalking -- as the "boson" massless particle just sails eternally in the field until "mass" finds it, and presto, love at first sight].

Higgs had to assume the invisibility of both the particle and the field since we would otherwise have seen these rare birds by now would we have not?

Before their molted emergence from invisibility they are just that -- invisible.
Gone yesterday, here today.

Hence, an electronic "BLIP" of sorts is the explanation of the universe i.e.
invisible particles move through invisible fields and presto -- chameleon wonders - there they are, as the massed particles we know.
It is a magical transformation that reminds of the works of Lewis Carroll.

Yep. Alice in Wonderland physics.

Let us look at the Wikipedia definition of these unseen bosons. We have added the bracketed material to better explain what in fact are merely "theoretical constructs" and not actually particles observed in nature, although we suspect, that, once found, they will necessarily be a "deep purple" virtually heavy metal, like the ensuing money that the physicists will obtain to continue upon and expand their research of the invisible after finding their first invisible particle:

"Bosons contrast with fermions [no one has ever seen either of them, of course] which obey Fermi–Dirac statistics. Two or more fermions cannot occupy the same quantum state (see Pauli exclusion principle) ... [but] bosons with the same energy [that's E] can occupy the same place in space [a place that is simply empty (!), unless it is occupied, but by two at once?] [so that] bosons are often force carrier particles [forces of what?]. In contrast, fermions are usually associated with matter [and not its opposite, of course, not that we have ever seen it] (although in quantum physics the distinction between the two concepts is not clear cut [that is the Matter"horn" of physics]).

Bosons may be either elementary, like photons, or composite, like mesons [hadronic subatomic particles, one quark plus one antiquark, bound by strong interaction -- well, a weak interaction just might not hold them together.].

All observed bosons have integer spin, as opposed to fermions, which have half-integer spin [well, no one really knows what this spin is, but it looks to us like half-a spin, uh....]... in accordance with the spin-statistics theorem ... in any reasonable [God forbid unreasonable!] relativistic quantum field theory.... [so that as for "spin", the physicists rolled the dice and that is what they came up with].

While most bosons are composite particles, in the Standard Model, there are six bosons which are elementary:

• the four gauge bosons (γ · g · W± · Z) [Photons as carriers of the electromagnetic interaction, W and Z bosons as carriers of the weak interaction and Gluons as carriers of the strong interaction, except at low energies "because they are color-charged, and subject to color confinement"] [well, they are then perhaps not "deep purple", but more of a "Clockwork Orange"]
• the Higgs boson (H0)
• the graviton (G). [this is my favorite but I have hopped up and down trying to find it, with no particle appearance yet, and nobody else has ever seen one yet either]"

So, there you have it. "The basic words" of modern physics. Lewis Carroll told us essentially the same thing in different words in Through the Looking Glass in the year 1872, as Humpty Dumpty gave "the word" to Alice on "words", "semantics" and "pragmatics", much like understanding hadrons, bosons, fermions, quarks, photons, mesons and gravitons --- which no one has ever seen of course -- but the physicists swear they are there, and they have "words" for them, much like Humpty Dumpty explains "glory" -- which after all, is what the "boson" physicists are after, sort of a royal "deep purple", the heavy metal compensation of "glory":

"`I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
`But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master - - that's all.'
...

[as for cosmic things and the parameters of physics]

'And "THE WABE" is the grass-plot round a sun-dial, I suppose?'
said Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity.
'Of course it is. It's called "WABE," you know, because it
goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it--'
'And a long way beyond it on each side,' Alice added.
'Exactly so. "

Well, now what about all that talk about bosons and ENERGY and SPACE. How come they are all flying around with no mass at all in something that is nothing at all? We have assumed up to now that if E=mc2 then m can not be zero, now can it, so the problem here, as always with these instrument measurements is just WHAT are they measuring?

Well, BLIPS of energy.
Sort of like "THE WABE" of Lewis Carroll "here, there, and everywhere".
Exactly.

Strangely, the "particle" out of which the entire universe is allegedly made is "elusive" -- which makes sense -- since the particle is invisible, as is the field in which it moves. But mathematical constructs "demand" it.

Let us be frank.
It is much more fun to measure what can not be seen
-- the religions do this all time, by the way, in their way.

So the physicists now seek their own "God particle", as it were,
a particle with no mass, flying around in the middle of nowhere.
Just as God created all, out of the void.
Get the picture?

But how do you measure invisibility?
Maybe these invisible particles are the size of elephants.
Good grief. What would we do then?

After all, if they have no mass, then size is not even an issue.
They can be any size they want -- just as words could mean anything he wanted to Humpty Dumpty, as he said, "'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master--that's all.'"

And of course, that is what these modern "words" in physics are all about.

Modern scientists have their "master" and billion-dollar machines to prove it (such as CERN's atom smasher, the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider, used for finding "a Higgs Boson") -- and to prove their "words".

So, as could be expected, the scientists now announce that they can in fact tell us -- once again after an initial false start -- that a Higgs Boson visited THEM --  leaving a BLIP on their desk ... moving at faster than the speed of light, not visible of course, but with a "shadow" of a message to the world.
BLIP.

What more do you want?

Happily we can say, that we too are expecting a "boson" type of speed visitation this coming Christmas, when "more rapid than eagles" Santa Claus "the invisible caller" calls, in the words of Clement Clarke Moore in 'Twas the Night Before Christmas:

"More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and call'd them by name:
"Now! Dasher, now! Dancer, now! Prancer, and Vixen,
"On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Dunder and Blixem;
"To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
"Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"
As dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys - and St. Nicholas too:
...
He sprung to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew, like the down of a thistle:
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight-
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night."

Now, that is FAST.
BLIP.

And we did not even get to the heavyweight Twinkie of physics,
the muon, which may be used for an even more expensive physics elementary particle collision machine in the future, the muon collider, but that is for another date.


Update: Just for information

Just for general facts and information....

The Muon Collider and the Higgs are discussed at the
Quantum Diaries.