Higgs Hunters Talk

Simulation collision

  • Prothon by Prothon

    i restarted to play Higgs Hunters and found it peculiar if not annying to see so many more Simulation Collisions!!!

    Are you missing R E A L Collisions perhaps? whats the deal, tell me.If not well i will keep giving you Simulated Answers!

    Posted

  • DiNapoli by DiNapoli

    I'm doing a lot of time here lately and my expirience is that there are actually a lot less simulations than before.
    And the lhc started working again this week so I assume more real data will come in soon 😉

    I'm not from the scienceteam though 😉 so they might have a better explanation.

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  • DZM by DZM admin in response to Prothon's comment.

    Hi @Prothon -- the science team has written an extensive response to people's concerns about simulations and the number of simulations:

    http://blog.higgshunters.org/2014/12/17/tell-me-the-truth/

    Hope you find it useful in answering your concerns. Let me know!

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  • markbakovic by markbakovic

    The following diatribe may be of interest to any non-troll, but still simulation-hating readers:

    y'know that t-shirt with the cartoon of a spectacled "mad scientist" character, stick figure etc. and a few conical flasks / danger symbols and the slogan "Stand back, I'm going to try science!"?

    The reality is that "trying" (or even, gasp, "doing") science is a lot less about crazy lab shenannigans with scant regard to health and safety regulations and a lot more about peering intently at heaps of data, eliminating every possible alternative explanation and then cautiously approaching the most conservative and easily testable conclusions about whatever is left. This is how phrenology is dismissed as quackery, yet miniscule blobs of matter that multiply if you pull them apart are accepted as fact.

    There seems to be a misconception that looking at the "real" events on Higgs Hunters is science, but looking at the simulations is somehow not. Like it's filler, busywork or somehow insulting to our pride as esteemed arbiters of what is and is not "an ocv". I don't understand this. Imagine using a length of string to measure your waist and not holding the string up against a ruler afterward... would you know your waist measurement in any units other than "this length of string"? How would you tell someone on the telephone what size trousers to send you; "like this length of string I have here"? What if the string was very loosely spun and changed its length over time, and surprisingly easily under outside influences? Then after a week you wouldn't even be able to say you had a "one this length of string" waist.

    And completely additional to the issue of calibration (because of course that doesn't apply to me, I'm 100% accurate 100% of the time. Just like everybody else) is the reason scientists spend ages developing and generating and poring over simulations. Wait a second, read that again. Scientists spend time looking at simulations. Like, paid professionals. With professorships and bow ties and funky hair and stuff. Why? So they know what they're looking for*. It's a learning experience. You put as many of the rules governing a process into a very powerful computer and ask it to show you what something would look like, and that means something because you know what you asked it to simulate. Every time we see a simulation on Higgs Hunters we are being told that this is what an event of interest would look like. If we pay attention to these lessons, pretty soon we get a much better idea of what's important, what to look out for etc. And there's often something new to learn even for the more seasoned among us, we just might have to look a little harder.

    *There have been articles coming out since at least 2013 on simulations of particular events in LHC 2.0, so that people can get ready for what to look for. There are discussions of simulating LHC events at least as old as from 1991, seven years before they even started building the thing and twenty years before the first noteworthy amounts (lots and lots) of Higgs-type decay observations started to accumulate. I'd guess more "scientist hours" have been spent on simulations with this machine than on "real data".

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  • Prothon by Prothon in response to DZM's comment.

    Hi DZM , Thanx for your prompt follow ups! As i humbly understand ,mostly,surely not ; (its more like a gigantic maze to me),it is as important for you that we complete as much as we can , both simulated and Realcollisions. Lets go to work!!

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  • DZM by DZM admin in response to Prothon's comment.

    That's the spirit! 😃 Thanks for your hard work and help!

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