The h Bar

To be more precise, word is that they have found a resonance at 125 GeV, with a 5σ significance when the data from both ATLAS and CMS are combined. But they're not sure that it is in fact the standard model Higgs boson.

Hi @Argus

The Tevatron experiments announced yesterday that they had evidence of the same resonance at 125 GeV with a significance of 2.9σ

Manishearth

@kortuk well, his mother does work on the higgs thingy.

Hmm, interesting

David Zaslavsky

If nothing else, the official results are supposed to be kept under wraps until the announcement at ICHEP, so even if your friend's mother knows the results, she's not supposed to tell you

Manishearth

Yep, I can guess that :p

N3buchadnezzar

Could someone give me a short nudge to what it means that they have finnaly discovered the Higgs particle?

David Zaslavsky

4:06 PM

You might want to take a look at profmattstrassler.com , that's one of my preferred sources for news about the Higgs boson and other particle physics stuff

@N3buchadnezzar Are you curious about the implications of discovering the Higgs boson, or how they would know they have discovered it?

N3buchadnezzar

More the former =)

David Zaslavsky

@N3buchadnezzar As far as I know, not that much. It would basically confirm something that particle physicists have expected for a long time, and then the standard model would be complete (in the sense that there are no remaining undiscovered predicted particles). But it's not going to inspire any particularly new physics that hasn't already been done.

Which is sort of unfortunate, because everyone has been hoping the LHC would find something that would inspire some new physics.

Manishearth

Is string theory still a nebulous blob then?

David Zaslavsky

Yep :-P

Manishearth

Ah :p

David Zaslavsky

4:14 PM

At least, no experimental confirmation for that yet. But that's kind of unrelated to the Higgs boson.

N3buchadnezzar

Higgs bosoms

Manishearth

Yeah, it was sparked off from your "new physics" comment

David Zaslavsky

indeed

People were also hoping the LHC would discover supersymmetric partner particles, but that didn't happen

Manishearth

by "nebulous", I meant "hundreds of various branches". Of course it hasnt been experimentally verified yet :p

Hmm, that would be new physics

I mean, supersymmetry has been explored, but IIRC not much

Right?

David Zaslavsky

@Manishearth Oh, well... yeah, that's probably a fair assessment.

@Manishearth Theoretically, people have done a lot of work with it. But experimentally, no, not much.

Manishearth

4:18 PM

Hmm

David Zaslavsky

@ColinMcFaul @RoryAlsop hi, I see you lurking :-)

Colin McFaul

Yeah, I'm lurking. I don't have anything interesting to say about the Higgs, the LHC, SUSY, or string theory.

David Zaslavsky

sure :-)

I do also want to talk about tag cleanup

at some point

N3buchadnezzar

@ColinMcFaul I doubt anyone has anything interesting to say about string theory BAZINGA.

Manishearth

@colinM More of a chemistry guy, hmm?

David Zaslavsky

4:21 PM

lol ;-)

N3buchadnezzar

As in something that could actually be proven.

Colin McFaul

@N3buchadnezzar HA!

David Zaslavsky

I'm actually involved in a discussion about this on Reddit at the moment

Colin McFaul

@Manishearth, my research is most chemistry these days, but my formal education is all physics.

David Zaslavsky

@ColinMcFaul oh cool, that sounds like an interesting crossover

Manishearth

4:24 PM

@colin hmm, you're an exEP student? College starts in a month, I'm taking EP as well :)

Colin McFaul

So between the two, I feel most comfortable answering questions about core physics classes and some low-level chemistry.

David Zaslavsky

Hi @lurscher

Colin McFaul

My department is called Physics and Engineering Physics, but the EngPh part of it is still being built

Manishearth

Aah

Colin McFaul

a couple of my classes were cross-listed, but I don't feel that I knwo enough engineering to call myself an engineer

David Zaslavsky

4:27 PM

What is the difference, anyway? Is EngPh like what other people call applied physics?

Colin McFaul

we've run one or two classes of undergrads through the engPh curricululm, but we're only now about to get our first actual engineering grad student

@DavidZaslavsky, that's probably what i personally would call it :)

Manishearth

@david apparently we have nanotech and semiconductor stuff in our 4th year

Aside from that, most of our courses are pure physics

Colin McFaul

one difference that i know of is that the EngPh program has to go through an engineering accredidation

the only other difference I think i notice is a larger emphsis on the design of instrumentation.

David Zaslavsky

@Manishearth Makes sense

Manishearth

Hmm

Colin McFaul

4:30 PM

but i don't know, i might bve making that up

Manishearth

:p

@colin so what are you researching?

Colin McFaul

stimuli-responsive polymers

Manishearth

Looks interesting :)

Colin McFaul

and what different ways I can abuse them to change the stimuli-responsiveness

it is interesting.

it's hard, too, because i'm playing catch-up on the chemistry

Manishearth

Am I correct in assuming that this will help us understand the crazy behaviour of enzymes?

Colin McFaul

4:34 PM

i guess some polymer physicists don't do their own chemistry, but we insist on doing most of our own chemistry.

yeah, that's one of the hopes

Manishearth

:)

Colin McFaul

the idea is that it's the same process as protein folding and unfolding

Manishearth

Yeah, I figured

Colin McFaul

but proteins are a lot harder than synthetic polymers ):

David Zaslavsky

Gotta start small I suppose

Manishearth

4:36 PM

Of course :)

So, a Physics student, doing research in chemistry, which finally has applications in biology.

Science is awesome

David Zaslavsky

True dat ;-P

Colin McFaul

exactly. i love the interdisciplinary part of it.

David Zaslavsky

Honestly, I'm a little jealous... my own research has basically no applications at all

Manishearth

I think you'd told me what it was. Refresh me? :)

David Zaslavsky

Oh, my research? I basically work on analyzing solutions to an equation which governs part of the structure of the proton

5

A: How the nucleon structure has been identified experimentally?

As you may know, when particles are scattered off a target, what actually gets measured is the differential cross section $\frac{\mathrm{d}\sigma}{\mathrm{d}\Omega}$. This can basically be thought of as being related to the fraction of particles that come out of the collision in a particular dire...

Like that sort of stuff, generally speaking

Manishearth

4:45 PM

Ooh, nice

Wait.. I thought parton!=quark

David Zaslavsky

Quarks are one type of parton

Manishearth

Unless you're Gell-Mann

David Zaslavsky

Well, actually they're several types of parton...

"partons" = quarks + gluons

in a set theory sense

Manishearth

Aah

David Zaslavsky

OK, well, before this chat session ends, there are a couple of site-related things I wanted to talk about (maybe in the future we'll do these at the beginning)

Manishearth

4:49 PM

Yep :)

David Zaslavsky

First, there was some talk about adding the word "Astronomy" to the site logo. I haven't really thought about that for a while, but I just wanted to see what people's current thoughts are on that matter.

Manishearth

Don't think it matters if it ends.. Whoevers around will probably stay around

David Zaslavsky

@Manishearth hm, probably true

Manishearth

Something like a subtext (& astronomy)?

David Zaslavsky

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking

4

Q: Change name to Physics&Astronomy?

Related: If it's possible, do we want to expand the scope of this site to include astronomy? Related chat : http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/71/conversation/site-merging-chat-event It seems that we have decided to take all Astro questions, including observational astro (though we...

the relevant meta question, if anyone is curious

Manishearth

4:52 PM

Another possibility, to keep the Physics part of the logo like it is, but add in smaller text '& Astronomy' under. — Holowitz May 17 at 6:41

lurscher

hello :)

Manishearth

My thoughts about the renaming have changed since that post, now I support it

Hey there :)

David Zaslavsky

OK, cool :-)

I plan on bringing this up with the team sometime soon

and I just wanted to see if people still had particular opinions about it that I should keep in mind

Colin McFaul

i like changing it at least in the logo, to make it more apparent that astro questions are considered on-topic.

Manishearth

Well, I mainly have the same concern as anna. Avoid highlighting astro too much

lurscher

4:56 PM

physics & astronomy sounds good

David Zaslavsky

@Manishearth yeah, I'll keep that in mind, but I don't think it'll be a problem.

Manishearth

We can probably get them to redirect astro.se to us (like seasonedadvice, etc)

Kk

Not too concermed about it either

David Zaslavsky

The other thing I wanted to talk about (oy, 3 minutes!) is the tag cleanup.

Manishearth

K

David Zaslavsky

This seems like an opportune time to make a push to finish retagging light

2

Q: Tag cleanup--[light]

Chat link, Another one I'm currently retagging all questions tagged light to visible-light and/or electromagnetic-radiation Since editing them all at once will flood the main page, I'll keep track of them here, and slowly work my way through them. Feel free to help! (try to do maximum 5 at...

discussion cleanup

Manishearth

4:58 PM

Ah right, keep forgetting

We have radiation next up as well

David Zaslavsky

@Manishearth me too actually ;-)

Manishearth

(EM radiation? Thermal radiation? Gives-you-cancer radiation?)

David Zaslavsky

who knows, there's even some overlap among those

Manishearth

Being able to do only five at a time is annoying, though.

David Zaslavsky

Yeah, but probably it's for the best

Manishearth

5:01 PM

Of course :)

David Zaslavsky

Anyway, it's 1:00 - thanks to everyone who showed up for the chat session today and we'll be here again in 2 weeks!

Manishearth

Yep :)

If I get time, I'll write up the radiation post as well

David Zaslavsky

@Manishearth OK, cool

I'll retag a few of those light questions, starting from the bottom of the electromagnetic-radiation section

Manishearth

Kk

Do we need to keep track of it via the meta post? Or is it really no issue if we burn through the list directly?

David Zaslavsky

As long as we're keeping it to 5 at a time, I think we have to keep track

Manishearth

5:06 PM

Kk

David Zaslavsky

6:03 PM

For anyone interested: the presentation of CERN's results on the Higgs search will be shown at webcast.web.cern.ch/webcast 9AM Zurich time

Argus

6:48 PM

Hi @David I tried to coincide my lunch with the chat schedule but my phone was definately not in the mood to cooperate. I will be on at my usual time.

David Zaslavsky

8:43 PM

@Argus Sure, no problem

experimentX

9:06 PM

did chat event end??

Argus

10:49 PM

I believe it was only an hour or so long

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