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The Large Hadron Collider has, so far failed, to find the elusive Higgs Boson. Article here.
This is the bit, of the article, I'm not sure what to make of: "If the Higgs exists, the LHC experiments will soon find it. If it does not, its absence will point the way to new physics."
Does that mean they'll have to bring God back into the equation? 
Quote: Does that mean they'll have to bring God back into the equation?
or magic pixies.
What do they mean by "new technologies"?
Just a term for other, as yet unconceived, methods of looking for answers.
Quote: This is the bit, of the article, I'm not sure what to make of: "If the Higgs exists, the LHC experiments will soon find it. If it does not, its absence will point the way to new physics."
Does that mean they'll have to bring God back into the equation?
No, they just have to look at the next most crazy theory
Quote: It has failed to find the God particle.
So far - but not finding it adds to our knowledge as well as finding it.
Quote: But what is meant by "new physics"?
Creating a new model that meets all the available evidence.
I once failed to find a shop in London so have decided that this shop must clearly not exist.
Or is it that their experiment went wrong????
There is a fair chance that in the fine detail of the current hypothesis for explaining the make up of materials there is knowledge we do not have so the Higgs may not exist. Just like we once thought there was nothing smaller than the atom. This provides the spice/interest to motivate scientists to go find the next step. i.e create the hypothesis and go do experiments to prove or disprove it.
Neither finding Higgs or not will prove or disprove god. You could argue both are theories waiting to be proven.
Quote: Creating a new model that meets all the available evidence.
Quote: No, they just have to look at the next most crazy theory
Hmm..... it does rather look like theories are made up and then we spend billions trying to justify the theory!
Sometimes it does rather look like "God" (in whatever form) is actually the simplest solution.
Quote: Hmm..... it does rather look like theories are made up and then we spend billions trying to justify the theory!
Sometimes it does rather look like "God" (in whatever form) is actually the simplest solution.
That does look correct and yes for many hundreds of years god has served as the cost effective solution. Perhaps the solution in these tight budget times. It also allows insurance companies to get out from payments as acts of god are often not covered.
Quote: Hmm..... it does rather look like theories are made up and then we spend billions trying to justify the theory!
Well duh. That's how it works, you come up with a hypothesis and you test it. You attempt to disprove your as much as possible, till you run out of ways to disprove it and the theory becomes indistinguishable from truth.
Quote: Sometimes it does rather look like "God" (in whatever form) is actually the simplest solution.
It might be the simplest, but then so is saying "I don't know". Neither of which help us understand the universe,build MRI Scanners, global computer networks, lazer printers, or any number of other things that have yet to be thought of.
I always remember the old scientific statement - "Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence".
As they say in the article - if they don't find it where they are looking for it they will have to look elsewhere in lower or higher energy ranges - where it is more difficult to look.
They then say that if they don't find it where current theories say it should be they may have to look again at the theory, which is simply good science.
If they knew the answer before they started it wouldn't be a "Theory" - that's how science progresses
Quote: I always remember the old scientific statement - "Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence".
That certainly applies to the work they do at CERN. There has been at least one particle they have found purely because of its effect on other particles around it, not because they could actually see the particle itself.
I think every 'A' level Physics student has probably done the 'Brownian Motion' experiment, using smoke to demonstrate the particulate nature of air. Sub-atomic particle discovery is often similar to that.
"Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence" is well used and for general scientific work holds true. However, if you have specific conditions under which your theory would state that something was evident, i.e. if it would definitely be present and your detectors would definitely detect it, then indeed absence of evidence does prove evidence of absence, showing that your theory is flawed in some way.
If I look in my bath tub and don't see any toy boats, that is proof enough to me that there are no toy boats there, not that there are toy boats, but I just can't see them for some reason.
If it has been stated that the LHC would definitely detect the HB particle (if is exists) then not detecting it means that "it" does not exist, in so far as "it" is defined by a specific theory. It may well be that "it" exists in some other form, that the theory is incorrect, hence "new physics"
Maybe the HB particle is under the bubble bath foam in your bath Bri!
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