Quote:
Originally Posted by dd74
Is the Higgs bozon black matter?
How exactly will the scientists know it when it occurs?
How many times will the scientists run these tests before they achieve their desired results? Or, if not, will there come a time when they'll just give up and call it a day?
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Part of the issue is that we don't know how "big" the Higg's is. The Standard Model doesn't give exact values for particles that are several rungs up the ladder from what we've seen. It gives a range of mass. WE also don't want to make TOO big of a collider, because then it will preferentially make the giant particles, and not the slightly smaller ones we're interested (strange and beauty quarks, etc). It's not just there to find the Higg's, they have (probably) dozens of other experiments going on simultaneously looking for other data.
Is it dark matter? Well, yes, in a way, but so are you
Dark Matter is anything that doesn't give off radiation itself. That would be just about everything in the universe except for fusion driven stars.
Dark ENERGY? That, we don't know. The Higg's was postulated to be the force carrier of mass long before Dark Energy (Quinessence) was "rediscovered". They could be related, or they could be the opposites of each other (think electron/positron).
IROC can give a better idea, but they'll run that ring until they run out of money. The older rings are still cooking along, it's relatively easy to upgrade them. If they expect the Higg's at 40 pounds, and they don't find it (even if they know they should have), then they don't assume that it's a failure, they assume that it's at 41 pounds, or the theories need some tweaking (sometimes input data isn't accurate enough...think of that hurricane in the Gulf right now).