Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss
did string theory predict the Higgs-boson mass?
94 views
Skip to first unread message
![Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]'s profile photo](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/default-user=s40-c)
Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]
Jan 2, 2012, 12:16:04 AM1/2/12
to
In a commentary in the 22/29 Dec 2011 issue of Nature (volume 480,
page 415), also online (open-access, a rarity for Nature content!) at
http://www.nature.com/news/particle-physics-is-at-a-turning-point-1.9675
Gordon Kane (director emeritus of the Michigan Center for Theoretical
Physics) asserts that on the basis of string theory, he and his
colleagues predicted (conference presentation in August 2011, then
arXiv:1112.1059) a Higgs-boson mass consistent with that (~125 GeV)
recently sort-of-detected at the LHC.
I think this is interesting for a number of reasons:
First, Kane et al's results seem to me to be a concrete & testable
prediction from string theory. For the last decade it has been, to
put it mildly, controversial whether string theory could ever produce
such predictions.
Second, it seems to me that the recent LHC results
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/12/13/first-glimpse-of-the-higgs-boson-guest-post-from-jack-gunion/
do indeed qualify as at least tentative confirmation of Kane et al's
prediction.
Third (and of relevance to, for example, Robert Oldershaw's
long-standing quest for "definitive predictions"), I note that
arXiv:1112.1059 is dated 5 Dec 2011, 8 days *before* the two LHC
detector groups (ATLAS and CMS) announced their recent results.
So this prediction wasn't "tuned" to fit the LHC data.
Fourth, I'd like to quote Kane's commentary's final paragraph:
The same string theory (actually M-theory) that predicts the Higgs
mass correctly also predicts that a spectrum of superpartners and
some of their associated signals should now be discovered at the
LHC. Particles such as gluinos - superpartners to gluons, which
mediate the strong force - have not yet been searched for explicitly
in the decay modes predicted by the string theories, mainly decay
to top and bottom quarks. They could be found in these modes by the
middle of next year. If so, the discovery may have a lower profile
than the news of the Higgs boson, but the implications could be
even greater. String theory could have come of age at last.
Now for the caveats:
* There are of course various assumptions made in Kane et al's analysis.
I don't know enough about string theory to say whether or not those
assumptions are plausible ones.
* The LHC data to date have only modest statistical significance.
Fortunately, the LHC is now running very nicely
[This is a good place to acknowledge the huge efforts
by the CERN LHC operations group which have brought the
LHC online, surmounted various "teething troubles", and
finally gotten it running so nicely!]
so in another year we should have considerably more data to confirm
or refute the observatrions, and in another 3-4 years we should have
MUCH more data.
This is a fun time to be a physicist!
--
-- "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]" <jth...@astro.indiana-zebra.edu>
Dept of Astronomy & IUCSS, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."
-- quote by Freire / poster by Oxfam
page 415), also online (open-access, a rarity for Nature content!) at
http://www.nature.com/news/particle-physics-is-at-a-turning-point-1.9675
Gordon Kane (director emeritus of the Michigan Center for Theoretical
Physics) asserts that on the basis of string theory, he and his
colleagues predicted (conference presentation in August 2011, then
arXiv:1112.1059) a Higgs-boson mass consistent with that (~125 GeV)
recently sort-of-detected at the LHC.
I think this is interesting for a number of reasons:
First, Kane et al's results seem to me to be a concrete & testable
prediction from string theory. For the last decade it has been, to
put it mildly, controversial whether string theory could ever produce
such predictions.
Second, it seems to me that the recent LHC results
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/12/13/first-glimpse-of-the-higgs-boson-guest-post-from-jack-gunion/
do indeed qualify as at least tentative confirmation of Kane et al's
prediction.
Third (and of relevance to, for example, Robert Oldershaw's
long-standing quest for "definitive predictions"), I note that
arXiv:1112.1059 is dated 5 Dec 2011, 8 days *before* the two LHC
detector groups (ATLAS and CMS) announced their recent results.
So this prediction wasn't "tuned" to fit the LHC data.
Fourth, I'd like to quote Kane's commentary's final paragraph:
The same string theory (actually M-theory) that predicts the Higgs
mass correctly also predicts that a spectrum of superpartners and
some of their associated signals should now be discovered at the
LHC. Particles such as gluinos - superpartners to gluons, which
mediate the strong force - have not yet been searched for explicitly
in the decay modes predicted by the string theories, mainly decay
to top and bottom quarks. They could be found in these modes by the
middle of next year. If so, the discovery may have a lower profile
than the news of the Higgs boson, but the implications could be
even greater. String theory could have come of age at last.
Now for the caveats:
* There are of course various assumptions made in Kane et al's analysis.
I don't know enough about string theory to say whether or not those
assumptions are plausible ones.
* The LHC data to date have only modest statistical significance.
Fortunately, the LHC is now running very nicely
[This is a good place to acknowledge the huge efforts
by the CERN LHC operations group which have brought the
LHC online, surmounted various "teething troubles", and
finally gotten it running so nicely!]
so in another year we should have considerably more data to confirm
or refute the observatrions, and in another 3-4 years we should have
MUCH more data.
This is a fun time to be a physicist!
--
-- "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]" <jth...@astro.indiana-zebra.edu>
Dept of Astronomy & IUCSS, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."
-- quote by Freire / poster by Oxfam
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
Jan 2, 2012, 1:06:28 PM1/2/12
to
In article <9mbhvn...@mid.individual.net>, "Jonathan Thornburg
by chance? As Bill Press remarked in 1995 (in a remark appropriate to
the state of the field then), someone knows the Hubble constant to two
significant figures---we just don't know who that person is. In other
words, apart from its correspondence to the experimental results, is
there any objective reason to prefer this prediction to others?
[remove -animal to reply]" <jth...@astro.indiana-zebra.edu> writes:
> First, Kane et al's results seem to me to be a concrete & testable
> prediction from string theory.
> First, Kane et al's results seem to me to be a concrete & testable
> prediction from string theory.
> Second, it seems to me that the recent LHC results
> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/12/13/first-glimpse-of-the-higgs-boson-guest-post-from-jack-gunion/
> do indeed qualify as at least tentative confirmation of Kane et al's
> prediction.
>
> Third (and of relevance to, for example, Robert Oldershaw's
> long-standing quest for "definitive predictions"), I note that
> arXiv:1112.1059 is dated 5 Dec 2011, 8 days *before* the two LHC
> detector groups (ATLAS and CMS) announced their recent results.
> So this prediction wasn't "tuned" to fit the LHC data.
>
> Fourth, I'd like to quote Kane's commentary's final paragraph:
> The same string theory (actually M-theory) that predicts the Higgs
> mass correctly also predicts that a spectrum of superpartners and
> some of their associated signals should now be discovered at the
> LHC. Particles such as gluinos - superpartners to gluons, which
> mediate the strong force - have not yet been searched for explicitly
> in the decay modes predicted by the string theories, mainly decay
> to top and bottom quarks. They could be found in these modes by the
> middle of next year. If so, the discovery may have a lower profile
> than the news of the Higgs boson, but the implications could be
> even greater. String theory could have come of age at last.
Can one rule out there being so many predictions that one will be right
> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/12/13/first-glimpse-of-the-higgs-boson-guest-post-from-jack-gunion/
> do indeed qualify as at least tentative confirmation of Kane et al's
> prediction.
>
> Third (and of relevance to, for example, Robert Oldershaw's
> long-standing quest for "definitive predictions"), I note that
> arXiv:1112.1059 is dated 5 Dec 2011, 8 days *before* the two LHC
> detector groups (ATLAS and CMS) announced their recent results.
> So this prediction wasn't "tuned" to fit the LHC data.
>
> Fourth, I'd like to quote Kane's commentary's final paragraph:
> The same string theory (actually M-theory) that predicts the Higgs
> mass correctly also predicts that a spectrum of superpartners and
> some of their associated signals should now be discovered at the
> LHC. Particles such as gluinos - superpartners to gluons, which
> mediate the strong force - have not yet been searched for explicitly
> in the decay modes predicted by the string theories, mainly decay
> to top and bottom quarks. They could be found in these modes by the
> middle of next year. If so, the discovery may have a lower profile
> than the news of the Higgs boson, but the implications could be
> even greater. String theory could have come of age at last.
by chance? As Bill Press remarked in 1995 (in a remark appropriate to
the state of the field then), someone knows the Hubble constant to two
significant figures---we just don't know who that person is. In other
words, apart from its correspondence to the experimental results, is
there any objective reason to prefer this prediction to others?
Robert L. Oldershaw
Jan 2, 2012, 9:45:42 PM1/2/12
to
On Jan 2, 1:06 pm, hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---
In that issue of Nature online, the first response to Kane's
commentary is by Peter Woit directing readers to the other side of the
story at "Not Even Wrong".
I believe this is the link that Woit gives:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=4262
If you read Woit's analysis of Kane's commentary, I think you will
have quite a different conclusion about whether or not "string theory"
has produced a definitive prediction of the putative "Higgs boson",
which is still far from being discovered, although some act otherwise.
Also very entertaining are the many follow-up comments on Woit's
original blog article, which come from a wide selection of
viewpoints.
Science requires a balance of open-mindedness and skepticism. It is
not an easy balance to maintain - especially when wants a certain
tentative result to be right.
I agree with Woit: "string theorists" seem to be getting a bit
desperate of late.
Robert L. Oldershaw
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Discrete Scale Relativity
undress to reply) wrote:
>
> Can one rule out there being so many predictions that one will be right
> by chance? As Bill Press remarked in 1995 (in a remark appropriate to
> the state of the field then), someone knows the Hubble constant to two
> significant figures---we just don't know who that person is. In other
> words, apart from its correspondence to the experimental results, is
> there any objective reason to prefer this prediction to others?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Can one rule out there being so many predictions that one will be right
> by chance? As Bill Press remarked in 1995 (in a remark appropriate to
> the state of the field then), someone knows the Hubble constant to two
> significant figures---we just don't know who that person is. In other
> words, apart from its correspondence to the experimental results, is
> there any objective reason to prefer this prediction to others?
In that issue of Nature online, the first response to Kane's
commentary is by Peter Woit directing readers to the other side of the
story at "Not Even Wrong".
I believe this is the link that Woit gives:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=4262
If you read Woit's analysis of Kane's commentary, I think you will
have quite a different conclusion about whether or not "string theory"
has produced a definitive prediction of the putative "Higgs boson",
which is still far from being discovered, although some act otherwise.
Also very entertaining are the many follow-up comments on Woit's
original blog article, which come from a wide selection of
viewpoints.
Science requires a balance of open-mindedness and skepticism. It is
not an easy balance to maintain - especially when wants a certain
tentative result to be right.
I agree with Woit: "string theorists" seem to be getting a bit
desperate of late.
Robert L. Oldershaw
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Discrete Scale Relativity
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
Jan 3, 2012, 3:01:54 AM1/3/12
to
========================================================================
Moderator's note:
----------------
I've shortened your quote to the part
necessary for your posting. Please avoid full quotes! HvH.
========================================================================
On 02/01/2012 18:06, Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote:
>
> Can one rule out there being so many predictions that one will be right
> by chance? As Bill Press remarked in 1995 (in a remark appropriate to
> the state of the field then), someone knows the Hubble constant to two
> significant figures---we just don't know who that person is. In other
> words, apart from its correspondence to the experimental results, is
> there any objective reason to prefer this prediction to others?
I would say that the real test is two or more accurate and (mostly)
unrelated predictions from the same theory. Mass of the Higgs may be
one, but what else is there?
--
Dirk
Full Spectrum Praxis : ZERO STATE : http://zerostate.net
Moderator's note:
----------------
I've shortened your quote to the part
necessary for your posting. Please avoid full quotes! HvH.
========================================================================
On 02/01/2012 18:06, Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote:
>
> Can one rule out there being so many predictions that one will be right
> by chance? As Bill Press remarked in 1995 (in a remark appropriate to
> the state of the field then), someone knows the Hubble constant to two
> significant figures---we just don't know who that person is. In other
> words, apart from its correspondence to the experimental results, is
> there any objective reason to prefer this prediction to others?
unrelated predictions from the same theory. Mass of the Higgs may be
one, but what else is there?
--
Dirk
Full Spectrum Praxis : ZERO STATE : http://zerostate.net
0 new messages