CERNs Them Right!

1. Our friends at CERN have now confirmed that neutrinos don't achieve faster than light speeds.
2. Their friends at a variety of other research organizations have also confirmed that fact.
3. In fact, their friends have helped to identify some of the various problems with CERN's initial experiment which led to the assertion that they had seen Faster Than Light (FTL) neutrinos.

While this should be no real surprise to anyone who's been following the story, the most interesting part is yet to come. Having hoodwinked many of the major particle physics investigators into looking into this FTL neutrino question, the investigators at CERN have managed to give themselves a relatively uncrowded window in which to further their search for the Higgs boson.

We should expect some kind of announcement from CERN regarding either the finding of the Higgs or of their having excluded yet another energy range from its potential home.

When will the particle physics community learn not to take any announcements from CERN at face value? They've done nothing but spout red herrings for the past year or more, whether "sharing" the best places to look for the Higgs boson or telling us they've found it, but won't have confirmation for several months, or they've seen FTL neutrinos and need help figuring out what's actually going on, or any number of other things.

CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci said, in a press release, that ”Although this result isn’t as exciting as some would have liked, it is what we all expected deep down.
“The story captured the public imagination, and has given people the opportunity to see the scientific method in action – an unexpected result was put up for scrutiny, thoroughly investigated and resolved in part thanks to collaboration between normally competing experiments. That’s how science moves forward."

That's how science moves forward indeed - by pulling the proverbial wool over the eyes of competing investigators in order to grab the glory. Lobachevsky anyone?

Watch this space to see what's really been going on at CERN - it should be quite interesting!

Posted by Procrustes 17

Related Posts:
CERN, Cosmic Rays, and Cover-Ups
CERN to Hide Higgs Boson
CERN's LHC Wants Your CPU Cycles
Slowly I CERN ... Step By Step ... Inch By Inch ...
Trying to disCERN the Truth
OOTing Out the Higgs Boson at CERN
Finally conCERNed About Facts
Still Playing The unCERNtainty Card
CERN Boosts Their Beams

Results Are Still UnCERNtain

1. Scientists at CERN's LHC had reported clocking neutrinos at speeds faster than light.
2. Without radical changes to all of currently-understood physics, this simply didn't make sense.
3. CERN called for other labs to examine their experiment and help to find the flaws - if there were any.
4. CERN is now claiming to have found two separate problems in the setup of this experiment - one that would overstate the speed, and another that would understate it.

Bowing to pressure from Listener 43, I'm posting a quick response to all this brouhaha, in spite of the fact that nothing has really been determined at this point.
It still seems likely to me that this whole mis-measurement was foisted upon the scientific world as a distraction - a red herring, as it were - to keep other, competing labs from making any progress in their search for the Higgs boson. CERN has consistently seemed to mislead their "colleagues" (read competitors) as to the likelihood of finding the Higgs in various energy levels, and I, for one, see no reason not to think this is simply more of the same.

Still, time will tell (how's that for a punnish ending?)

Posted by Procrustes 17

Related Posts:
CERN, Cosmic Rays, and Cover-Ups
CERN to Hide Higgs Boson
CERN's LHC Wants Your CPU Cycles
Slowly I CERN ... Step By Step ... Inch By Inch ...
Trying to disCERN the Truth
OOTing Out the Higgs Boson at CERN
Finally conCERNed About Facts
Still Playing The unCERNtainty Card
CERN Boosts Their Beams

CERN Boosts Their Beams

1. CERN plans to boost the energy of the beams at the LHC from 4.5 to 5.0 TeV per beam.
2. They anticipate that a year of experiments at these higher energies should let them find - or rule out - the Higgs boson.
3. They're still publicizing the 124-126 GeV range as the hiding place for the elusive particle.

It seems incredible that anyone is bothering to believe these folks anymore. Several months ago, confirmation of the Higgs boson was just around the corner, and now they're planning on a full year of higher energy experiments to either pin it down or rule it out.

In spite of these higher energies, they are still not running at the top levels for which the LHC was designed. Purportedly, this is to avoid "burning out the power interconnects" - something which one would expect to have been included in the design for those top power levels.

Again, it seems odd that the CERNers are telling everyone where they're looking, and at what energy levels they'll be running these experiments. Does anyone else smell fish? Red herring, to be precise?

This all make me wonder if maybe these LHC folks aren't quite the braniacs they represent themselves to be.
Posted by Procrustes 17

Related Posts:
CERN, Cosmic Rays, and Cover-Ups
CERN to Hide Higgs Boson
CERN's LHC Wants Your CPU Cycles
Slowly I CERN ... Step By Step ... Inch By Inch ...
Trying to disCERN the Truth
OOTing Out the Higgs Boson at CERN
Finally conCERNed About Facts
Still Playing The unCERNtainty Card

Still Playing the unCERNtainty Card

1. The scientists at CERN's LHC have made the momentous announcement that they may have an announcement to make next year.
2. They've detected what might be a particle at what might be the correct energy for the Higgs boson - the so-called God particle.
3. Other commentators seem unwilling to take CERN's uncertainty at face value, preferring to trumpet solid evidence for the Higgs boson.

These fine folks seem to have bracketed the Higgs boson's expected energy range, seeing "something" at 124 and 126 GeV - the currently bandied-about mass of the Higgs is 125 GeV.
While they tell us that statistically, they don't feel justified in claiming to have found the particle, they feel this means that they will find it next year. While this may be little more than a way of assuring another year's funding for the experiments, it may also be yet another go at sending competing investigators on a wild-goose chase after yet another energetic red herring.
Or it may not.

I for one will be happy when this hunt is over - with its attendant sniping and misdirection - and we can all once again find ourselves in a universe which is permeated with aether.
The supposed emptiness of space would be most happily replaced by that aether, and then work can begin on Higgs field generators.

That, my friends, would be the most important next step coming from any such discovery. The generation of a Higgs field would mean the eventual achievement of faster-than-light travel. By creating the analogue of a noise-cancelling field, mass could be negated.
Imagine the possibilities - they seem nearly limitless.

I know I've been (and continue to be) suspicious of the folks at CERN and the LHC, but if they actually come through with this discovery - or even if one of their competitors manages the feat despite the false starts and red herrings thrown in their various paths - this could be the beginning of something truly wondrous.

Posted by Procrustes 17

ROOTing out the Higgs Boson at CERN

UPDATED! - See Below

1. CERN says it's removed 40,000 bugs from ROOT, the software that analyzes the data from the Large Hadron Collider.
2. ROOT - made up of 3.5 million lines of C++ code - crunches the 15 PB (petabytes) of data generated by the LHC's collisions each year.
3. Several million additional lines of code have been added in the search for the Higgs boson by the physicists on staff.
4. They admit there is no guarantee that they've gotten all the bugs - "software doesn't work that way," said Axel Naumann of the ROOT development team.

It's quite interesting that not long after the LHC@Home project was instituted, "bugs" are found in the ROOT system of the LHC at CERN. It would appear that the physicists and managers underestimated the potential threat to their software from connecting to vast numbers of "home" computers.
My colleague, Gyro Gearloose, has unearthed statistics indicating that a large plurality of home computers - whether Windows or MacOS - are compromised by viruses, trojans, or rootkits which could easily threaten the software of other computers which communicate with them. While it's a bit of a stretch to think that CERN is running Windows or Mac software to control much of anything, C++ is a common language, and rogue hackers are more than conversant with it. C++ may be the back-door leading to the derailing of the search for the Higgs boson.
I hesitate to exonerate the leadership at CERN without more evidence, but it may be that my past criticism has been somewhat too stern.
Should developments confirm that suspicion, you will find my apology here (but I'm not ready to bet on it).

Update:

CERN has announced they've found neutrinos going faster than light, but they're not confident of this result and are asking other physics teams to check their results and replicate their experiments. Could this be an artifact of compromised analysis software? It's looking more and more as if these folks are simply incompetent, rather than malicious. I'm not sure which is worse, when handling the powerful equipment and vast budgetary resources which are a part of this kind of science.

Posted by Procrustes 17 (with thanks to Gyro Gearloose)

Related Posts:
CERN, Cosmic Rays, and Cover-Ups
CERN to Hide Higgs Boson
CERN's LHC Wants Your CPU Cycles
Slowly I CERN ... Step By Step ... Inch By Inch ...
IP v6 is on the way - with Big Brother
IPv6 May Not Be Necessary

Trying to disCERN the Truth

1. Just over a week ago, CERN scientists were telling their colleagues that they didn't have the evidence of the Higgs boson which they had previously thought they had.
2. They claimed - bizarrely - that their loss in statistical certitude meant they had a better chance of finding the so called "God particle."
3. This week, they're claiming to be ahead of schedule in their search for this elusive particle. In fact, they claim they may have evidence of a discovery "by Christmas."
4. Somehow, the LHC has been pumping out collisions at a rate of approximately six times that they had "expected" prior to this announcement.

Once again, the LHC scientists at CERN seem to be playing fast and loose with their colleagues' collective credulity. One has to wonder if they were really that far off in the understanding of the capabilities of their machine. Of course, with their vaunted "LHC@home 2.0" program, they were anticipating a faster analysis cycle, but certainly they're not getting more collisions as a result of this program.

It seems apparent that the CERN leadership has already decided when and what their announcement will be regarding the Higgs boson, and they're trying to play the international press like a cello until then.

One can only hope they will turn out to be less unforthcoming in their science than they seem to be in their press relations.


Posted by Procrustes 17

Related Posts:
CERN, Cosmic Rays, and Cover-Ups
CERN to Hide Higgs Boson
CERN's LHC Wants Your CPU Cycles
Slowly I CERN ... Step By Step ... Inch By Inch ...

Slowly I CERN ... Step By Step ... Inch By Inch ...

1. Scientists at the LHC at CERN have been playing games with their colleagues regarding the likely energy levels of the Higgs boson.
2. At the Lepton Photon conference in Mumbai, these same scientists are now saying their results are less statistically significant than they first thought - a statistical quirk is how they describe the data that led to their initial reports.
3. By doubling the amount of data used, they've moved from 2.8 to 2 sigma significance.
4. Despite this decrease in certitude, they're claiming that this loss of certitude is actually giving them a better chance of finding the so called "God particle" in the near future.

Once again, it would appear that the scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider are playing "Hide the Boson" with their colleagues / competitors. It seems quite clear that the only reason to publish these reports is to send other teams off on wild boson chases in the wrong energy ranges yet again.
We can only hope that the other research teams will stop taking the bait and recognize a red herring when they see one.

Posted by Procrustes 17

Related Posts:
CERN to Hide Higgs Boson
CERN's LHC Wants Your CPU Cycles

CERN's LHC Wants Your CPU Cycles

CERN is at it again.

1. CERN has updated their LHC@home program to LHC@home 2.0
2. This is a program designed to let the scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider use the computers of regular people to do their work.
3. This 2.0 version is designed to run particle collision simulations on "volunteer" computers in their quest to find the Higgs boson (aka God Particle)
4. CERN already pointed other researchers away from particular energy ranges in order to reserve those for their own investigation.

Once again, CERN has tipped its hand regarding the Higgs boson. It's clear that they have no regard for the ethical conduct of science, as they have repeatedly attempted to throw their colleagues off the track by dropping red herrings in the midst of their releases. Now they're busy using the computers of unsuspecting volunteers to further outpace their colleagues.
In order to do the distributed processing entailed by LHC@home 2.0, they've gotten those volunteers to allow the installation of "simulation" software on their computers, thus granting CERN - and its European Union rulers - access to the contents of those machines. It remains to be seen just what tracking capabilities are included in that software, as well as just how deeply the scientists and bureaucrats at CERN are willing to probe.
I'll report here as I uncover more information, but suffice it to say that I'm concerned - very concerned.

Posted by Procrustes 17

Update:
CERN seems to be having a problem, or they're blowing another smoke-screen. Their system gives a message blaming a "ROGUE" system or systems for keeping new users from signing up for the program. It may be nothing more than a ploy to make it look more popular than it is, or it may be the result of poor programming resulting in an overload of data being "returned" to them from the computers they've already compromised through their software.

Related Posts:
CERN, Cosmic Rays, and Cover-Ups
CERN to Hide Higgs Boson
H2O and USB
SETI and Timing

CERN to Hide Higgs Boson

The scientists at CERN are up to it again. Last week we reported on their active refusal to report the results of their experiments regarding cosmic rays and climate change. This week's apparent outrage seems even more insidious than their last.
It appears that the folks at CERN's Large Hadron Collider are steering the rest of the particle-accelerator world away from particular energy levels as they all seek the Higgs Boson. By telling their colleagues that they've ruled out certain energy ranges, they've essentially assured themselves of exclusivity in those precise ranges.

We once again have to be concerned that CERN - with that worlds' largest particle accelerator - are looking to reap the benefits of proving the existence of the Higgs Boson. Until they have submitted all these results to the normal process of peer-review, we can only assume the worst - that they've found this elusive particle, and are working on proprietary ways to harness it for their own gain, scientific, financial, or other.

Until CERN is forthcoming with details of their discovery, rather than throwing elementary particle red herrings into the world's tokamaks, we have little chance of proving or disproving this dire suspicion. We can only hope that the powers that be at CERN will realize the responsibility that comes with high energy physics domination.

Posted by Procrustes 17

Related Posts:
 CERN, cosmic Rays, and Cover-Ups
Radiation and Antibiotics