Still no Higgs Boson

 Scientists at CERN’s large Hadron Collider have yet find the Higgs Boson after yet another try this week. They did however narrow the mass range where it may be found to between 115 billion electron volts and 127 billion electron volts. One team got a hint pointing to 125 billion electron volts and the other team got a hint pointing to 126 billion electron volts. They expect to get a final answer some time in 2012.

Among the possible answers is that the Higgs boson is not there to find. If the Higgs boson is shown not exist it will force a rethink of some aspects of particle physics theory. The Higgs boson is supposed to be what gives all other particle their mass but if the Higgs Boson is shown not to exist it will require a new theory. This is not an uncommon part of science in fact it is critical to the process. It’s just nicer as a scientist when you get it right.

How Neutrinos Going Faster than Light Posses no Problem for the Theory of Relativity.

The recent report by CERN that they measured neutrinos going faster than the speed of light by about 20 parts per million has made quite a stir. Given that the speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s these neutrinos were going 6 km/s faster than light which could easily be an experimental error.

It would not be a problem for Special Relativity since not traveling at or faster than the light only applies to particles with a real non zero rest mass. A particle like a photon that has a zero rest mass travels at the speed of light. Particles that travel faster than light have been speculated for years under the name tachyons. Tachyons would have a negative imaginary rest mass giving it a real non zero mass at speeds above the speed of light. It would however be incapable of being decelerated to the speed of light below it.

Also quantum effects like quantum tunneling provided another way around the light barrier by allowing particles to instantly skip over an area of space without actually going through it while traveling sub light through the space it does go through thus not violating Special Relativity.