||But at Fermilab, scientist Robert Roser greets the news with skepticism. “These are both kind of like one in 50, one in 100 probability that the background could fluctuate up to be a signal. So not very compelling at all yet," he said.

Roser visited the CERN laboratories in the days leading up to the announcement of progress in the search for the Higgs. He says there is also caution in Europe about what the latest results mean. “And there was no popping of champagne corks… it was pretty much business as usual going on in there. People were talking about their individual analyses and what’s going on… they weren’t giving each other high fives saying we got this thing settled. So I think in Europe there is an air of caution," he said.

“You cannot yet rule out that this small axis of events is from other processes that are mimicking the Higgs.||

The joke continues: The priest replied, "But, see, good sir, we have been holding a mass since Christ was born some 2000 years ago without ever have heard of you or seen you." To which Higgs Boson gravely replies, "May be, but you need me for your gravity too which holds you down to the church floor." The priest was unsurprised and said, "Oh I see, I always thought it was the graveyard by the side which was the source of all the gravity; in that case, Mr. Higgs Boson, Sir, you may belong there."

However, very kind of Higgs boson to seem to be there to bail out the credibility of LHC and to ensure its secure funding. But at 2.3 ~ 1.9 Sigma? So the yes/no is still held in the clutches of the funding strategy. But surely put your champagne away in the deep freezer! Also, the strategy has to be excellent otherwise they too shall see the funds drying up like it happened with Fermilab. What was the harm in having it running too, in order to do a quick parallel check on everything? Don't we believe in replicating experiments at more than one place? That too when the GeV is well within the Fermilab range.

I as an amateur researcher fully agree with Professor Hawking. The reasons for mass and gravity are totally different than Higgs. For example, faster than light Neutrinoes and Higgs both cannot coexist -- either one has to be wrong. It's DCE research and superluminal speed which has the potential of breaking current scientific barriers, rather than finding a nebulous statistical dual peak for a Higgs, which well could be due to many other anomalies, one that LHC could not decipher is that of the UFOs.

@anadish Why all this anger? Did a particle physicist inappropriately touch you once?

So you're complaining that particle physicists shouldn't keep the public informed about a tax payers funded project? Or should they have kept it secret until they find a 5sigma event? The very fact that they are open about it seems to be the right thing to do but somehow they are people like you who jump up and down believing anything just as long it's a lone wolf (e.g. faster than light neutrinos) but are beyond sceptical about a fully funded and researched project like LHC because, you know, conspiracies and stuff.

Did you or did you not in a very passive-aggressive way state that the particle physicists are making it up? Just to keep their funding? Also you seem to hint this is an international conspiracy that also involves shutting down Fermilab. Have you any proof of this? Do you have a trail of emails and documents that show how and what these evil physicists have done?

No I don't think so. Another wannabe. Do you go on about "how light is massless so how can it have energy because E=mc^2 says it doesn't" type of guy. Or will you go on about Brian Cox failing in maths and so he's not really a physicist just some guy BBC trained up to be the voice of science? Or are you one of those people that if you don't understand something then you blame the person talking and it's all made up to secure funding...

E/m=c2 or another way of putting it Absolute Energy equals Input, Output and Usage (A.E.I.O.U).
Instead of smashing atoms and then trying to catch (glimpse) the remains, scientist should be using spherical magnetic force, then any particles (frequency/reverberation) escaping could be easily captured (a diode system may have be incorporated) and by which can be reverted back into the system.
Thus also creating fusion.
The reason for the masslessness is that is utilizes all incoming and outgoing forces/energy/matter to be able exist.
Even if they do discover, scientist will then have to find a way to create the particle from "nothing".

*sigh*

Where's the whiskey....right....nope still doesn't make any sense.

@Drlan

Thanks that it made you write a defense of the normative. But was the US invasion of Iraq and yesterday's withdrawal a logical thing? Everybody was made to believe (or believed) that SH had WMDs (lots of them) and so it was logical and sensible to undertake an 'experiment' which eventually cost a trillion (if I am right). If you think everything was (and is) hunky dory and straight there, then I have nothing to say. It's really not conspiracy by a Machiavellian prince that moves things as they move in the human world. It is a kind of creative-innovative mix that makes us intelligent as well as cunning -- the two qualities go hand in hand. You can't really paint me entirely quirky and LHC entirely diamond-like bright.

But, If you feel like 'let me think' on what I said now, in that case, I also would like to add a few bits here. Call it a quirk of 'fate' or part of some 'divine' design that Fermilab had to shut down before LHC had to get those low sigma blips. Hadn't it been nicer if we could Fermilab rerun that region, just to confirm? It's neat to talk like a lawyer, asking for evidence. But if one feels something's wanting or could have been nicer, or even something might be fishy or stinky, in a democratic society, one cannot prosecute another for saying something without material evidence (in Qaddafi's Libya they would have hanged me by now, if he was in charge of LHC). For prosecuting me (for making accusition without evidence) LHC has to move court against me, or you can suggest them to make the move (if you are close to them).

If I say something on physics, I use my limited knowledge of physics and science to do that. And I feel I am very much within my right to do so.

Two things:

1) ATLAS and CMS are two separate and independent experiments on the LHC, so indeed they both serve the purpose of providing a parllel check on each other
2) Here are the most recent results from Fermilab: http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.5518 , notice that there is a 0.5-1 sigma excess in the mass region but that the sensitivity of the two fermilab experiments (CDF and D0) is poorer than the LHC. Now recall that the LHC data used in the recent result was taken in one year, the tevatron results I linked too took many years, it would not be cost effective for the Tevatron to continue running if the only justification was to look for the Higgs as the LHC experiments have now comfortably surpassed them in sensitivity for that energy range.

notice that there is a 0.5-1 sigma excess in the mass region but that

should have said "notice that there is a 05-1 sigma excess in the mass region 120-130 GeV but that"

Everybody was made to believe (or believed) that SH had WMDs

I think you'll find that not everyone believed Bush and Blair.

If I say something on physics, I use my limited knowledge of physics and science to do that.

That is painfully apparent.

And I feel I am very much within my right to do so.

That, however, I wholeheartedly agree with. So I'll finish by saying thanks very much for the laughs.

To put 5 sigma in context, in most biology, clinical trials etc. 2 sigma is considered significant and 3 sigma means you had a really good day.

@RichWoods

Come on. It's not laughs that make you write me down. Folks you feel ruffled. Otherwise, you wouldn't even have punched a single key to respond.

@frithioff

http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.5518

Please, read the last lines on p17 of the paper on the link you gave. Tevatron folks always felt that they were competitively placed in the region when they said, "These are the search modes for which Tevatron sensitivity to remain competitive with the LHC experiments for several years to come."

They would say that, wouldn't they? No - the Tevatron had already been extended by a year or so. They lobbied for a further three years and the Government said no. It takes cash to run an accelerator and they didn't have it. There is no conspiracy here - WIth the LHC running at the same time, it just wasn't cost effective.

@ sboyd11

Yeah, they had a trillion for the Iraq war, ok. They have cash for the Af war, right? They had dough to liberate Libya, isn't it?

In that paragraph I think they are referring to the H->bb modes, which (at the LHC) are about an order of magnitude less sensitive than H-> gamma gamma and ZZ modes. In the recent results from the LHC it was the gamma gamma and ZZ modes that dominate the limit. Although CMS showed a similar broad excess in H->bb to that in the Tevatron paper.

Fermilab, you may be surprised to know, is not the Department of Energy. If the DoE says "we
aren't giving you the money" there's not a lot Fermilab can do about it. I agree with you - there
was cash floating about but, crucially, not in the places Fermilab could access. It's politicians what
make the cash allocation rules - not physicists. Unfortunate, but there you are...

@sboyd11

Exactly, lobbying and planning for funding is the most crucial survival strategy for physicists, not quite unlike career politicians. Obama could manage his donations so well, he also had a very cunning strategist who allowed Hillary to lose steam too quite early. A physicist has to be quite adept at some kind of politics too, in order to survive (another way of saying, to receive funding). It is very simplistic to say that the Fermilab chaps were simpletons; they tried but failed; so, actually they did not try hard enough and intelligent enough a few would say. They couldn't sell there last wares so well -- they could have, God was not particularly on their side.

Another view could be that the US government is currently not so much interested in the fallout from this research. If the scene heats up, they might quickly pull all the key minds and and push for another kind of Manhattan Project in a jiffy so to say. Enrico Fermi too was pulled out of Europe -- a story well known to all (although there was a Nazi push too from Europe which made his wife vulnerable).

I really don't know what point you are trying to make. The Tevatron, even if it had kept running to this point, would know have obtained the required stats to act as another independent check. That's why there are two experiments at CERN (and if you think they conspire with each other you are deeply mistaken).

Of course physicists have to get funding. Almost anyone does - so I don't know what your point is. If you'd seen the way funding is actually allocated in Government - it's really not rational and is usually unswayed by logical argument.

In order to achieve a theory of everything, it is essential to accept that all particles are merely collections of positive and negative electric charges. Therefore what gives a proton mass, is the fact that it is made from around 2501 electric charges. This theory can be easily tested by taking particles of similar mass, finding the mass difference between them, then dividing it by 0.7 of the mass of an electron, to yield an appropriate integer. Squish Theory rules.

Except of course it does not, because physicists are never going to give up belief in their imaginary beings like Higgs, quarks, gluons, and dark matter. Having spent billions of pounds trying to prove these things exist, they are sure to just keep blindly saying ‘proved by experiment’, or ‘it is shown by the maths’, in much the same way their predecessors would have said things must be true because the bible says so.

http://energy.gov/contributors/secretary-energy-dr-steven-chu

DoE Secretary, Dr. Chu himself is a contemporary physics Nobel laureate, so you really cannot blame him for being either uninformed, irrational or illogical. Rather he would have been very rational in having decided to shut down Tevatron. With a Physics Nobel prize winner as the secretary, the Fermilab scientists were in the best of the hands, when it came to secure the future of experimental physics. However, it's a simplistic view again. Dr. Chu most probably saw the point you are making. As a Chinese origin American, he is more utilitarian (his work was just an elaboration of an earlier work being done at Bell Labs) than a European wedded to the idealism of renaissance, which would have tried to have the Higgs tested once again to bring to the discovery a renaissance like nobility. An oriental person (an Asian rather) still does not understand (or pander to) those hallowed renaissance ideas of many 'gentlemen' and 'noblemen' testing and retesting new discoveries in a Cavendish-like way (or, say, with a Holmtian panache). For Dr. Chu, probably a confirmation from LHC and any further practical applicability is good enough to think in a practical manner to start a new round of fresh research in the USA. However, ways of science are quirkier than an Asian would have imagined. It was the quirkiness of European 'bastards' like Leonardo that helped science advance in a magical manner during renaissance. And it was the 'practical' approach of the Chinese and the Indians which helped kill all their earlier discoveries from the rocket to the 0.

Would a practical science commentator like you bother about a third collider thousand of miles away coming out with a different result due to some reason still unknown to us? That's where Fermilab would have played a role. But, I suppose, a Blair-like rationalism is the good and bad of the present times. It appears, the zeal and madness (and the romance) of the renaissance scientist is all but gone. For good or for bad, only future will tell.

The Tevatron has already been extended a number of times given the delay of the LHC and the unfortunate turn-on accident. With the LHC producing data Fermilab was not able to secure the funding to keep the Tevatron running.

Fermilab needed to shut down the Tevatron, with a more powerful competitor the laboratory needed to find another project for the coming years. Had the Superconducting Super Collider not been cancelled in the mid 90s then the Tevatron would have been shut down ages ago. Fermilab still has its fixed-target experiments and the NuMI neutrino beam for things like MINOS and neutrino oscillation studies.

Technically, the Tevatron has the third (CDF) and fourth (DØ) experiments to complement ATLAS and CMS. CDF and DØ, as friendly rivals, would frequently keep each other honest in the same way I would expect ATLAS and CMS.

Anyway, the hints of a signal observed by ATLAS and CMS is interesting but there is also the benefit of more data to come. If both experiments observe a strong signal in the coming years then whatever comes out of CDF and DØ will not be that important. Unfortunate for the many good people working there but that is how it is.

The LHC is not even at full power yet. Once it hits full power then it will accumulate data far faster than the much older Tevatron. Despite the great work by the researchers at CDF and DØ, there is only so much you can do given how much errors tend to scale down with increasing data (unless you are unfortunate and are theory-limited).

RIP Tevatron,

Sure, shutting down an old plant and starting a new 'powerful' one is the forte of our advancement. Poor old Concorde similarly died down, without any replacement in sight. I am sure there would soon be a corporation or two (are there already some?) selling commercial colliders to China, India and Brazil. Besides North Korea, if the embargo is loosened!

You are rather given with taking a fact and building a large and rather shaky house-of-supposition and conspiracy on top of it. The Tevatron had largely been superseded, and the DoE has other things to fund. It's a shame, and I'd rather it was kept running, but there you are. Would I bother about another collider? If it came out with results with reasonably sensitivity, of course I would. It would be data. As it happens, the final Higgs analysis from the Tevatron are entirely consistent with the LHC results.

As for the renaissance scientist - he was able to do his experiments on a bench-top with prisms. More power to him. Unfortunately we kind of understand prisms now, so we have to look elsewhere. Elsewhere
involves expensive machines to get our data. The zeal is still there - but tempered, I'm afraid, by a bit of pragmatism. The renaissance scientist also had very rich patrons - so there weren't many of them.

"You are rather given with taking a fact and building a large and rather shaky house-of-supposition and conspiracy on top of it."

I suppose even LHC is doing (minus the conspiracy part) it now, even if they use rather dry scientific terminology to do that. The genesis of science is in this kind of whiff-suspicion about a little fact or a coincidence. I remember the supercritical airfoil has origins in Whitcomb getting stuck to the word 'plumbing' when he heard a German scientist deliver a lecture on how to streamline air flow around a plane.

NB

It is interesting, but do we really understand prisms now? Kind of. That's the answer. But a lot more remains unanswered. I am writing this because when I took up glass and shone light through it, gradually from well known Lau fringes to stranger phenomena took place. I have experienced how much is there even in a prism to look into. However, many would disagree with a confidence humans were always known to possess on knowledge and understanding.

Thanks.

3 sigma might mean you had a really good day, or a very large dataset, or you have tested an inappropriate subset of the dataset against another dodgy subset. IOW in biology 3 sigma results should make you suspicious, unless it is something like the probability of people with the Huntingtin mutation developing Huntingdon's Chorea, but we have picked those low hanging fruit now and are using abstruse stats to sift population based genotypes for environmental interactions with those genetics. Not 3 sigma territory, the data are far too noisy.

BTW during my biology PhD I used Chi Squares to test the likelihood of different mutant phenotypes occurring together in a an inbred mouse line. Some of them came out absolutely random (warning, low sample sizes) despite them only appearing in the mutant line and not the inbred line they mutated from. So they were caused by the, single, mutation. An interesting result, which probably just indicated that there were a number of genetic steps between the mutation and phenotype with environmental input muddying the waters.

Then there are those colleagues who take the attitude that if you need to use stats to persuade then your result isn't real. IOW if the data don't convince, the bars on the graph are obviously very different heights for eg, then using stats to persuade that two very similar results are in fact different is not very persuasive, by itself.

Quite true. Especially in this case when a lot of particles are known to get undetected due to their 'charm'!

http://www.bibhasde.com/bigbangfraudbook.html

A casual reading of CMBR on the net got me this. And we talk of minor conspiracies!

A casual reading of CMBR on the net got me this. And we talk of minor conspiracies!

Why is it people like this are unable to produce a web page that doesn't look as though it was created in the 1990's. All it needs is blink tags.

Incidentally, Bibhas De seems to have a distinct lack of publications in science journals, either alone or with Arrhenius or Alfven, whom he names on his CV.

Quite the same reason why LHC used Comic Sans font in their recent presentation.

Haveing altered the 'Gauge Symmetry' with all That Wishful Thinking and ''conditioned'' the whole LHC site, you cannot expect anything more than a false positive ! you will now have to build a new LHC.

I like multiple detectors for the simple reason that you can do different science with them. In this particular case, for example, if Higgs is lightweight there must be a companion particle to make it stable. Tetravon would have been quite capable of looking for the companion particle whilst LHC looked for Higgs.

Or maybe this isn't Higgs that was seen but some unknown particles. Again, LHC wants to look for Higgs, so something else is needed to look at something else.

That didn't happen, which is sad and IMHO short-sighted, but politicians are only paid to look up to the next election and how to win it, they're not paid to look after science. In Britain, it has generally been accepted policy that science is apolitical and should remain that way. (Although that never seems to matter when cash is short and pockets need to be plundered.) In the US, science is extremely political and that's why modern physics really isn't done there. (ITAR, LHC, et al -- all in Europe.)

Regardless of what anyone thinks is idea, the reality is what it is. The LHC is the only high-energy collider capable of looking for this sort of data. If wishes mattered, I'd wish me a couple dozen supercolliders for Christmas. They don't and I'm going to have to stick to watching other people do the exciting stuff.

I also like multiple detectors, that's why it's good that there are two competing general-purpose experiments (ATLAS and CMS) at the LHC. Not to mention the LHCb and ALICE experiments, which are focussed on completely distinct physics programmes.

if Higgs is lightweight there must be a companion particle to make it stable. Tetravon would have been quite capable of looking for the companion particle whilst LHC looked for Higgs.

Not really, most companion particles to a lightweight Higgs you could think of that wouldn't already have been seen at LEP, the Tevatron or HERA would be much easier to find at the LHC.

You have to understand that to significantly improve on their existing capability to search for new physics scenarios (e.g with data that already exists) the Tevatron experiments would need to double their datasets (at least), which amounts to a few years of running. At this early stage the LHC experiments' capability to find new things increases much more rapidly -> the available dataset from 2011 is more than 100 times larger than the one from 2010.
( To see what I mean
Look at the integrated luminosity - basically the dataset size - versus time for the Tevatron (2001-2011) here
http://www.fnal.gov/pub/now/tevlum.html
and the LHC ones for 2010 and 2011 here:
http://lpc.web.cern.ch/lpc/lumiplots_2010.htm
http://lpc.web.cern.ch/lpc/lumiplots.htm
)

Or maybe this isn't Higgs that was seen but some unknown particles. Again, LHC wants to look for Higgs, so something else is needed to look at something else.

LHC experiments look for a lot of "something elses", try comparing the number of ATLAS publications that are about the Higgs from their official list (hint: it's only the ones with "Higgs" in the last column):
https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/AtlasPublic

to the ones for "something else". Both ATLAS and CMS are careful to search for anything new that they might possibly be able to find, to avoid being scooped by the other. This was also the case with previous generations of particle physics experiments and in general STFC in the UK also funds particle physics research in areas of interest where the LHC experiments are not sensitive :

http://www.stfc.ac.uk/PPD/Experiments/22542.aspx

Quite the same reason why LHC used Comic Sans font in their recent presentation.

Ah, tackle the minor part of my post and leave the substantial part.

So why does De seem to have no publications in scientific journals? Even with those who supervised his doctorate.

I asked the same of e5equalmt the other day when he referenced Lynne McTaggart.

If these people have such ground breaking ideas why are they not being published in major journals (and yes, I know I am setting myself up for the usual conspiracy theories)?

I do not think De has major ideas of his own. But his critique of the CMBR horns makes some sense, even if a bit over-orchestrated and belaboured. Major ideas do not always beg major publication output, but they eventually have to translate into technology. If they never do, then they become suspect as far as human definition of knowledge goes. Myron Evans for instance.....

I do not think De has major ideas of his own.

Good start

But his critique of the CMBR horns makes some sense, even if a bit over-orchestrated and belaboured.

Does it? I thought it was simply a rant, incoherent and, as normal, full of conspiracy theories.

Major ideas do not always beg major publication output

Srsly?

they become suspect as far as human definition of knowledge goes

So do you wish to provide another definition of knowledge?

Myron Evans for instance.....

Ah yes, Myron Evans

Every 'scientifically' oriented person would like multiple runs of any experiments. Hertz during one of those silly trials of testing the dielectric strength of quartz discovered photovoltaic effect. There is no logic behind a less data gathering and more data gathering experiments. It is impossible to predict how, which and why of a future event in and out of an experiment leading or not leading to a discovery. It's quite like Alice's wonderland. There surely has to be a grand design of history one collider not working or working at the same site, which only our future generation will write or 'thought chat' about -- in their science chronicles! The romane of science has to be like this, Kekule dream to Nobel insight about Keisleguhr....

There are Ghosts in the Machine, and Ghosts trying to get answers from it !

And there are a lot of computors with keyboards that have a nut loose on them.

I do not think De has major ideas of his own. But his critique of the CMBR horns makes some sense, even if a bit over-orchestrated and belaboured. Major ideas do not always beg major publication output, but they eventually have to translate into technology. If they never do, then they become suspect as far as human definition of knowledge goes. Myron Evans for instance.....

@epeeist

Thanks for a vivisectionist analysis. However, do not cut up my comment to make it look meaning totally different.

I wrote, "Major ideas do not always beg major publication output, but they eventually have to translate into technology. " Which is self evident, but you cut out the latter half of the sentence to make it sound stupid.

I wrote, "If they never do, then they become suspect as far as human definition of knowledge goes. Myron Evans for instance....." Here you removed the first half to achieve a similar result. Surely, there could be many definitions of knowledge, transcending human consciousness, I may not be able to expound them, but there's no way I can deny their existence in other (many) forms of consciousness.

I referred to Myron Evans to illustrate the fact that in spite of his apparently logical theories, his technology seems very vague. Had he been able to use his ideas to make any of the proposed technologies function, he would have passed the test.

@epeeist

Myron Evans

I wrote, "Major ideas do not always beg major publication output, but they eventually have to translate into technology. " Which is self evident, but you cut out the latter half of the sentence to make it sound stupid.

Of course major ideas need publication in major journals. How many times have you heard of work being rediscovered years after it was produced simply because it was published in an out of the way journal? The work of Mendel immediately springs to mind.

As for scientific ideas having to be translated into technology, why is this a necessary condition?

I may not be able to expound them, but there's no way I can deny their existence in other (many) forms of consciousness.

If you can't expound them then why should I accept your claim that they exist? Or the "other (many) forms of consciousness" for that matter.

I referred to Myron Evans to illustrate the fact that in spite of his apparently logical theories

And I referred you to the introduction by Gerard 't Hooft to show you that his "theories" didn't hold up.

Of course major ideas need publication in major journals. How many times have you heard of work being rediscovered years after it was produced simply because it was published in an out of the way journal? The work of Mendel immediately springs to mind.

Yet you agree that major ideas may remain hidden in "out of the way journals".

I may not be able to expound them, but there's no way I can deny their existence in other (many) forms of consciousness.

You have to be either a hard core follower of one of those Semitic religions (who do not ascribe any consciousness to any other organism than Man), or like Christopher Hitchins a rancorous materialist, in order to deny any possibility of other forms of consciousness.

As for scientific ideas having to be translated into technology, why is this a necessary condition?

You again read me wrong. What I clearly said was even if a new idea seems unpublished and wooly, but if there is an experimental/technological demonstration of a phenomenon which the idea either postulates or points to, then that is an evidence that the new (badly, or less reported) new idea has a grounding in 'reality'. Technology after all is the mass produced form of experimental work, which mostly has to be profitable.

Yet you agree that major ideas may remain hidden in "out of the way journals".

Given that I cited Mendel and I often have to remind people about Alexander Friedman then you won't be surprised if I agree with this.

You have to be either a hard core follower of one of those Semitic religions (who do not ascribe any consciousness to any other organism than Man), or like Christopher Hitchins a rancorous materialist, in order to deny any possibility of other forms of consciousness.

Which neatly avoids providing any justification for your claim of "other forms of consciousness".

What I clearly said was even if a new idea seems unpublished and wooly, but if there is an experimental/technological demonstration of a phenomenon which the idea either postulates or points to, then that is an evidence that the new (badly, or less reported) new idea has a grounding in 'reality'.

Hit the "Post" button too early.

As for scientific ideas having to be translated into technology, why is this a necessary condition?

You again read me wrong. What I clearly said was even if a new idea seems unpublished and wooly, but if there is an experimental/technological demonstration of a phenomenon which the idea either postulates or points to, then that is an evidence that the new (badly, or less reported) new idea has a grounding in 'reality'.

If you are talking about testing then we can agree, in order to be something more than speculation a conjecture has to make predictions which can be tested. But this does not necessarily require new technology. What did Eddington use to test Einstein's general theory of relativity? What did Davisson, Germer and Thomson use to demonstrate the wave properties of the electron

What I clearly said was even if a new idea seems unpublished and wooly, but if there is an experimental/technological demonstration of a phenomenon which the idea either postulates or points to, then that is an evidence that the new (badly, or less reported) new idea has a grounding in 'reality'.

You copy-paste my words as your own! :-0
Surely, I can sound some depths of your 'consciousness'. You must apologize first for this blatant act of plagiarism before we continue this discussion.

Ok, I see the 'experimental' error while posting. Point taken.

Well, it was Thomson's work which lead to the development of the CRT eventually. I do have broad agreement with you, except for entering into a detailed discussion on 'consciousness' issue. You appear to be a philosophy of science man (may be an able inheritor of Shavian/CEM Joad legacy with a greater amount of cool thought), but if an allusion to 'other forms of consciousness' fails to make you ponder, then nothing else shall. I accept my 'intellectual defeat' in this case.

NB And even Russell, besides the two names.

You copy-paste my words as your own!

Oh FFS, I missed of a blockquote, if you sensibilities are so tender then you really ought to ask yourself whether you ought to be using the Internet.