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Jul 8, 2012

Three Manifest Miracles in Physics: Qualia, the Now and the Higgs Field

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

The whole within which we find ourselves at every conscious moment is a miraculous gift that we take for granted in our culture. Everything can be understood inside the world, so we believe in science – except for the qualia (like color) and also for the Now which both are non-existent in physics (although this is almost never mentioned).

For 4 days now, something that unlike the qualia and the Now exists within rather than outside the scope of science is just as baffling: the Higgs field. As Matt Strassler explained two years ago, the everywhere constant Higgs field is responsible for the masses of all elementary particles – without an exchange of particles being involved — provided it will be discovered experimentally via the signature of a first field-specific particle. Thus an immutable constant influence makes itself felt inside creation for 4 days. The freshly discovered Higgs particle can be called the first unmistakable miracle found in nature, because it reflects the presence of an everywhere constant field of unknown origin.

The discovery comes with a price tag which is none of its own fault. The machine made to find it was designed so as to also generate a second totally new animal in the hope that at least one of the two would be found: miniature black holes. The latter have eluded finding so far we are told, but this is not certain: a double success cannot be excluded.

This is because a trivial new implication of Einstein’s “happiest thought” of 1907 revealed that black holes possess radically new properties. The latter cause black holes to arise much more readily and make them invisible to CERN’s detectors. In addition they grow exponentially inside matter. Therefore if one specimen gets stuck inside earth, the planet will be eaten inside out after an asymptomatic period of a few years, so as to assume the size of a chestnut while retaining its gravitational influence on the moon.

No one likes this new implication of relativistic physics, published in the African Journal of Mathematics. In the current euphoria about the newly discovered Higgs miracle (a discovery planned to be made more significant by doubling the cumulative collision number during the remainder of the year 2012), there is no chance anyone will waste a thought on this unrelated second possible success of the LHC experiment. Hence no one cares about the new “safety report,” overdue after 4 years, or about the “safety conference” kindly requested by a court on January 27, 2011. When the most illuminating finding of history is waiting to be investigated further, a second sensational effect has lost all interest even if not uplifting but maximally dreadful in character.

Only if Professor Higgs himself spoke up in favor of a brief break in the experiment before the planned doubling in luminosity, would humankind get a chance to have the still valid proof that the dream result achieved is accompanied by the worst nightmare of history, punctured before continuing.

I need to talk to Professor Higgs immediately to win his sympathy and support. Is someone kind enough to introduce me to him?

P.S.: My anonymous colleague Bernd and I discovered today that the Higgs field is (like mass and charge) subject to a locally imperceptible reduction proportional to the gravitational redshift valid relative to the distant stars.

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Comments — comments are now closed.


  1. I have just written an article for my website at http://www.hait.org clearing up some issues about the God Particle.

  2. Brandon E Larson says:

    Please stop feeding the trolls.

  3. lsd says:

    It was only a matter of time until Rössler would find some revolutionary new insights about the Higgs field as well. It is not surprising that it is a extension of his ontological-relativity nonsense.

  4. Jason says:

    Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

  5. Enthusiasm (Prof. Hait) drives the world; differences of opinion can be ironed out later. Brandon is not a troll; I would like to join forces with him.

  6. Peter Howell says:

    Wow! I already called the Nobel prize committee and told them that Prof. Higgs is unworthy of the prize, and it needs to go to Roessler and Bernd das Brot!

  7. This is an undignified commentary, my dear Sir Peter.

    Professor Higgs’ finding is the greatest for a century — a pervasive background field.

  8. Brandon E Larson says:

    Everyone please contact Eric Klien and tell him to kick this clown off of this blog. I wanted to post here but I do not want my material here on the same page as this ignorant troll.

  9. Brandon E Larson says:

    While you’re here check out “Dr.” John Hait’s website. It looks like it might be good for some laughs. It looks like every kind of pseudoscientific quackery is represented there.

  10. Clairvoyant Brandon is giving his fellow students a bad example of irrational behavior. This is his good right to do. But since he appears here with his full name, I would like to ask him to give a reason for his publicly displayed irrational behavior (unless he can give us a good reason which is all I ever requested — to be disproved with my proof of danger).

  11. Peter Howell says:

    Eric Klien is not interested — the ceaty man gets this site web traffic at least. He dowsn’t care about the reputation.

  12. JohnHunt says:

    Peter, What about our starting an alternate blog site for all of us that want to post on topics which should be addressed here?

  13. This looks like a revolution by 2 young people who know already that the earth will be safe, and therefore unnecessarily dream about space travel — not realizing that it is already too late for space travel if they do not rise up themselves to give it a chance, too.

  14. Tom Kerwick says:

    Brandon/Peter — I can understand your frustration. Eric Klien has endorsed actions I have taken in the past of removing some of his more outrageous posts, but doesn’t think Otto should be kicked off and believes eventually this problem will go away as our board grows in size. I’d disagree but there you have it. Tom –WebAdmin.

  15. Bernd says:

    Sorry Tom. Maybe you have stated clear rules elsewhere online, but can you help me:
    1. Who evalutes what “more outrageous posts” are?
    2. What is the metric for such an action? The distance to the standard model? …

    From http://www.thefreedictionary.com/outrageous:
    1.
    a. Grossly offensive to decency or morality.
    b. Being well beyond the bounds of good taste: outrageous epithets.
    2. Having no regard for morality.
    3. Violent or unrestrained in temperament or behavior.
    4.
    a. Extremely unusual or unconventional; extraordinary: loved to dress in outrageous clothing; found some outrageous bargains.
    b. Being beyond all reason; extravagant or immoderate: spends an outrageous amount on entertainment.

    Bernd

  16. Tom Kerwick says:

    Bernd — no hard-fast rules, I just apply a bit of common sense. Incitement to violence ala “dear children: sweet barrage” or posting drivel about CERN employees being akin to urinating soldiers has no place on a discussion forum.

  17. I understand Tom and did not protest.

    But I ask your — everyone’s — forgiving that crying fire in a case of real danger — all I ever asked for is to be disproved with my sighting an iceberg on the deck of our precious Titanic — cannot be done with a subdued voice. (In fact this would require a streak of malevolence.) So I apologize while remaining hysterical — until someone dispels the bad winds with an elegant gesture as I still hope.

  18. rpenner says:

    You sighted no iceberg — you made up a story about an invisible iceberg and scared yourself about it.

  19. lsd says:

    The Rössler Dogma: He is right and it does not matter what is brouhht up againtst him — he can not become disproved. More important, in reality he does not want to.

  20. Bernd says:

    Thanks Tom.

    “You sighted no iceberg.“
    Reminds me at some good “last words jokes”.

    Bernd

  21. Peter Howell says:

    Well, if you have to download your moral compass from the internet, you might have other issues. Not a joke.

  22. Bernd says:

    Sorry, I don’t like trial and error. Not a joke.

  23. rpenner says:

    Science is trial and progressively less error.
    Not doing anything is repeated trial of the same damn thing and uncontrolled error.

  24. Bernd says:

    Germans were very successfull at NASA. You can imagine why.

  25. a distant star says:

    “valid relative to the distant stars. ”

    Oh yes, And relative to nearer stars there is of course adifferent ontological change of properties.

  26. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Yes, my twinkling neighbor.

  27. W. Lynkeus says:

    Now that we found the Higgs particle, are we to have a staircase next to the Muhlstrasse at Tubingen?

  28. Bernd says:

    A Higgs-like particle was found 5 sigma (standard deviations) over the noise level. “We know it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found,” said CMS experiment spokesperson Joe Incandela. “Positive identification of the new particle’s characteristics will take considerable time and data. But whatever form the Higgs particle takes, our knowledge of the fundamental structure of matter is about to take a major step forward.”

    If the next boson has a higher energy and more sigma, it will be the new star …

  29. I would think something similarly important will not be found for the foreseeable [good] future. This was a unique phase in which the Higgs field was found theoretically. Such good people are no longer around on the active scene.

  30. Bernd says:

    The good people will stay and get better. I bet $50 that a more proper Higgs Boson candidate will be found in the next 5 year with mass at least 5% different form the actual one 125,3 ± 0,6 GeV/c^2 (CMS).

    Why should there be only one Higgs boson and not a sprectrum?
    The mass donating process is complex and it is possible to extend the Higgs Lagrangian.

    Bernd

  31. It would be interesting to hear Professor Higgs’ opinion about this.
    He is needed here anyhow as we know. He might be stimulated into answering you.

  32. Bernd says:

    I think there are now quite many public and private discussions and blogs about his predictions and he simply is not aware of this blog here.

  33. I don’t have his Email.

  34. Otto E. Rossler says:

    This is a very impressive statement of his:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/video/2012/jul/06/peter-hi…sity-video

  35. Caleb says:

    What Professor Rossler calls the whole is better referred to as the centralized state. This concept can explain the now and the qualia.
    Qualia are inexistent in the distributed state, that is true. The now, though, is ubiquitous in the distributed state (called physics by Rossler).

  36. Caleb says:

    I forgot: See Prolegomena at cahi.de.
    Sorry.

  37. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Please, elaborate, Mr. Caleb.

  38. W. Lynkeus says:

    Not here. The black background colour depresses me.
    http://www.cahi.de

  39. Otto E. Rossler says:

    (There is a button in the upper right corner to switch to white.)

  40. W. Lynkeus says:

    Aaaaaahhh! Thank you!
    My circuits have irrevocably been linked to the issue of dehumanizing epistemics. Under this paradigm, the questions of qualia, now, and gravity belong to the communication problem: How will a centralized state that does not depend on the Kantian aprioris communicate with mankind? — There are tentative answers in my webpages. (cahi.de, ptolemaios,de, planetocaust.de)

  41. Bernd says:

    I heard rumors about questioning the actual Higgs particle candidate. Can somebody confirm?

  42. W. Lynkeus says:

    Oh, just in case: Anybody out there who would be interested in building a centralized state (“conscious computer”) based on monolithic kernels?

  43. Caleb says:

    Die Menschheit hat nicht deshalb überlebt, weil sie die Welt und sich selbst richtig erkannte, sondern, weil sie sich über das eine wie das andere eine überlebensvorteilige Illusion machte,
    und die Struktur dieser Illusion verhindert die Korrektur der Standard-Theorien.

  44. Caleb says:

    Qualia sind nicht Teil der Physik, können also auch kein physikalisches Rätsel darstellen. Das Gleiche gilt für das Jetzt. Das Higgs-Feld ist die physikalische Formulierung der Frage, warum etwas ist und nicht vielmehr nichts. Diese Frage beantworte Caleb in seiner Autobiografie, die aber erst posthum veröffentlicht wird. Bis dahin muss sich die Welt
    gedulden.

  45. Quote: “Qualia sind nicht Teil der Physik, können also auch kein physikalisches Rätsel darstellen. Das Gleiche gilt für das Jetzt.“
    (The qualia are not part of physics and hence cannot represent a physical riddle. The same holds true for the Now.)

    Absolutely correct — once you have seen the limitations of physics. Nevertheless this very limitation is a big eye-opener, is it not?

  46. Caleb says:

    Consider: Only subjects near can be objectives of science (Heidegger, Being and Time, § 69 b). This is why the laws of nature seem to be valid all over the universe. They may be not. Science can’t tell. It is not permitted to draw conclusions from black holes to micro black holes.

  47. Eric Penrose says:

    I would like to present a more skeptical review of the claimed Higgs discovery.

    After seeing comments of some physicists in New Scientist that began to question the claimed for Higgs compatibility of results and also of critiques by Luis Sancho — co-litigant against US govt for its partial funding of LHC — I would like to outline my own doubts about the way in which the Higgs data is being processed. For this I’ll use a short story based on an analogy of these searches.

    Prologue
    In the experimental searches for Higgs at the LHC it is investigated whether there are higher numbers of particle decay than would be expected from today’s standard model. This is for those channels of particle decays that are explored and for which the Higgs boson itself would decay into. These decay channels are of bottom quarks, tau leptons, di-photons and those involving decays of weakly interacting bosons. The numbers of these decays are then also compared with the alternative version of the standard model where the Higgs boson is itself incorporated. The following story is intended as a parady in order to question the way CERN processes the of results these searches. The last section relates to how — for the same number of collisions within the CMS detector — there are now published revised results for the same number of collisions. These revisions have the effect of slightly reducing the deviations from standard Higgs in two of the decay channels. The peer review for this paper was exclusively by at most three CERN based staff and one CERN affiliate.

    A Short Story — the Higgs Archery Challenge

    In this new type of archery event, named after its inventor Higgs, the ‘Higgs compatibility award’ will be granted based on how accurate the shooting is overall. The target is a horizontal band that is placed 30 degrees above eye level and 125m away. The team, with three members, is called ‘Unexpected’.

    ‘Unexpected’ is known for having one team member, called ‘weak boson’, who is accurate, another — ‘bottom tau’ — tending to strike too low, with the last — di-photon — striking too high.

    After an initial warm –up round, each archer is given another shot each. The result is that ‘Unexpected’ scores as it did in the practice (despite its name) showing an overall wide spread. This includes one strike nearer the lower edge of the target band, a strike well above it and one below.

    The judges finally deliver their verdict — “We now award to ‘Unexpected’ the Higgs compatibility challenge award. Our congratulations.”

    But some members of the audience complained that ‘Unexpected’ had only struck once within the area of the target zone — just one in three! The judges, who were from the ‘Centre Européen de Retraitement Numéro’ (‘European centre for number reprocessing’), were unpersuaded by the critics. The judges explained that the strike above the band can be compensated for by the two other strikes that were at least below the centre of the target band. There was particular concern from the critics that a strike too high — at least when there were also strikes below — should receive even higher scores than hitting within the target band itself. The critics had, for this first public event, mistakenly taken it for granted that archery is, well, archery.

    Subsequently, an independent investigation led to the criticism that the lowest and highest scoring marks from Unexpected were — when both sessions were taken together — so extreme that this meant that the team’s success should be annulled according to the incompatibility with Higgs’ band of these strikes in particular.

    So later again a reconsideration of the award was given over to another panel of judges. While the appeal judges were new, they too, all either worked at — or were affiliated to — CERN. They in turn decided that the old results for the scores of the lowest and highest marks in particular could be revised from the previous score that there both recorded as striking nearer the central line. The result was that the inaccuracy in these channels was no longer sufficient to annul the overall success. Unexpected’s award medal was thus finally confirmed.

  48. Eric Penrose says:

    My thanks to Niccolo for helpful suggestions for improving this