Can you think of any?
Here’s what I mean. When we set about justifying basic research in fundamental science, we tend to offer multiple rationales. One (the easy and most obviously legitimate one) is that we’re simply curious about how the world works, and discovery is its own reward. But often we trot out another one: the claim that applied research and real technological advances very often spring from basic research with no specific technological goal. Faraday wasn’t thinking of electronic gizmos when he helped pioneer modern electromagnetism, and the inventors of quantum mechanics weren’t thinking of semiconductors and lasers. They just wanted to figure out how nature works, and the applications came later.
So what about contemporary particle physics, and the Higgs boson in particular? We’re spending a lot of money to look for it, and I’m perfectly comfortable justifying that expense by the purely intellectual reward associated with understanding the missing piece of the Standard Model of particle physics. But inevitably we also mention that, even if we don’t know what it will be right now, it’s likely (or some go so far as to say “inevitable”) that someday we’ll invent some marvelous bit of technology that makes crucial use of what we learned from studying the Higgs.
So — anyone have any guesses as to what that might be? You are permitted to think broadly here. We’re obviously not expecting something within a few years after we find the little bugger. So imagine that we have discovered it, and if you like you can imagine we have the technology to create Higgses with a lot less overhead than a kilometers-across particle accelerator. We have a heavy and short-lived elementary particle that couples preferentially to other heavy particles, and represents ripples in the background field that breaks electroweak symmetry and therefore provides mass. What could we possibly do with it?
Specificity and plausibility will be rewarded. (Although there are no actual rewards offered.) So “cure cancer” gets low marks, while “improve the rate of this specific important chemical reaction” would be a lot better.
Let your science-fiction-trained imaginations rome, and chime in.
How can one give a reasonable answer to the question?
The possibilities of the application are beyond our current imagination. Einstein envisioned a laser. People in Bell(?) labs made them but did anyone foresee the DVD or checkout stand?
NO.
My guess – we will be able to create inertial dampening/free fields thus making rockets efficient.
Whatever use we find for it I’m sure my balding head will remain balding.
Make it bond with coal smoke recapturing, possible re-use, at least less pollution…emissions from cars also…
create a laser that would vaporize all the hicks boson therefore rendering the object massless and obsolete. Put it on a gun then you could actually shoot anything and it just dissapears. Or vice versa and turn massless photons into massed photons. Shoot anything at the speeed of light then we can stop missles from north korea and iran instantly.
You said it yourself.
Its principal practical application in the short term (meaning from now to the 24th century) will be providing scifi authors with a sound explanation for fingering Relativity. Cancelling the Higgs is cancelling the mass, and not only lightspeed becomes achievable, but at the tinyest effort of putting the smallest of amateur rocketry motor in the butt of the first probe to the nearest star. (you put another A motor to stop at destination, and 2 more to get back if you care to. Half of a second burn being the exactly the same as a 100 days burn, whatever the probe’s mass. A milisecond burn has also the same effect. Attitude control and navigation is still a technical challenge in those days, though.) 😀
If we can put any amount of energy into a Higgs field cancelling device, we can add just a little more energy to make the probe’s mass negative and negative mass is all it needs to go supraluminal without waking up Albert.
I know the equations may not add up (I think it’s rather imaginary mass that lacks but negative mass is imaginary enough for entertainment purposes.) But we have a practical application right now, if it’s only to help writers not only come up with entertaining and more realistic stories, yet also for them to deal more easily with those geeks coming out with odd questions about the real world at ComicCons. 😉
I see another practical application: a scifi author cannot do his job well nowadays without educating himself about the real science out there. The plot mostly lies in the yet unanswered questions and science doesn’t lack any. If you want people to get more excited by science, a good start rest in the ones who tell ’em good stories. This, I believe, from the beginings of humankind. If they’re educative on top of it, it’s nice a collateral effect. If it pushes anyone of any age to raise his or her scientifical awareness, what best practical application is there for the Higgs, even if it’s not ever found?
A few thought before I read the other comments…
Creating an extra strong Higgs field on one side of an asteroid heading for Earth so as to use the Sun’s gravity to deflect its orbit.
To reduce gravity in a chamber on Earth in a hospital for weak patients – by enhancing the gravitational attraction above the room.
Another form of communication using gravity waves – might be useful for communicating underground, or to submarines.
Production of electricity via artificial micro black holes, using a much enhanced Higgs field.
Enhancing the production of rare isotopes for selectively changing the preferred decay path of particle decays.
Constructing particle accelerators that use the Higgs field instead of magnets.
Creating wingless flying machines that work by enhancing the mass of the air above them.