From Columbia mathematician Peter Woit’s blog, on anew book that details the discovery of the Higgs boson (CERN physicist Jon Butterworth’s Smashing Physics):
For readers who know nothing about the physics involved, this book may not be the right place to start, with the well-known scientific story not getting a detailed treatment, and little in the way of graphics besides some Feynman diagrams. On the other hand, if you’ve read one of the other books about the Higgs, Butterworth takes you a lot deeper into the subject of LHC physics, including some extensive material on his work on boosted objects and jet substructure, which may lead to important results in future LHC analyses. If you like your science non-abstract and human, this is a great place to learn about the Higgs discovery story.
If Woit likes the book, it probably scores low on the crackpot index. Might be a good choice.
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A few semi related notes:
Now I wouldn’t know my way around higher mathematics if my life depended on it, but I’ve heard said that mathematicians depend on a ‘sense of beauty’ so as to intuitively know whether an equation may be truthful or not.
In fact, Paul Dirac, using such a ‘sense of beauty’ in mathematics, made a successful mathematical prediction for the existence of the ‘anti-election’, i.e. positron.
Although I could not find a direct quote from Dirac, It seems readily apparent from a Dyson quote I found that Peter Higgs must have used the same method as Dirac (i.e. a ‘sense of beauty’) for his mathematical prediction of the Higgs Boson, decades before it was discovered,,,
Of related note: Dr. Craig uses the mathematical prediction of the Higg’s boson as a philosophical proof for Theism.
Of related interest to this ‘sense of mathematical beauty’ guiding mathematical discovery, is that such a ‘sense of beauty’ also led to the recent discovery of the Amplituhedron:
But where this ‘sense of beauty’ in mathematics seems to break down is with string theory, and m-theory (perennial thorns in the side for Woit):
Also of interest, ‘The argument from beauty’ is a Theistic argument:
Though the following article is somewhat technical, it is almost comical to read how every approach, in which the materialists tried to reduce the subjective sense of beauty to a mere material mechanism, was thwarted.
also of interest to the Higgs discovery
@Bornagain
Would you say that the Higgs-Boson is part of the steps necessary to reduce gravity to a form of particle radiation like electromagnetic and the two nuclear forces since it is supposedly a particle that gives other particles their mass and mass is essential to gravity?
Vunderguy, I’m certainly not qualified to answer such a technical question, all I can do is repeat what was stated in the cite I referenced:
“(Moreover),The Higgs particle itself is outside the (standard) model. When its mass is plugged in, Bagger says, the picture goes wonky and the math says that quantum fluctuations over time should destroy the universe. “There are several options to fix the math, but none of them are within the standard model,” he says.”
Relativity, Expansion, and the Speed of Light
http://www.reasons.org/article.....d-of-light