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Monday, December 5, 2011

Science Bad News for the Higgs Haters?

Posted by Charles Mudede on Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 6:07 AM

Europe’s particle physics laboratory, CERN, is taking a cautious approach on persistent rumors (see, for example, the ViXra blog) that two experiments at its Large Hadron Collider have independently found evidence for the Higgs particle with a mass of 125 GeV – right in the ballpark predicted by the standard model of particle physics.

The Higgs is a missing piece of the standard model thought to endow all other particles with mass. Detailed rumors at Peter Woit’s blog Not Even Wrong say that ATLAS has observed a signal of a Higgs particle at 125 GeV with a significance level of 3.5 sigma – with 3 being enough to claim evidence but 5 needed for a discovery, while CMS has seen one at 2.5 sigma. As Geoff Brumfiel’s article “Higgs Hunt Enters Endgame” reports, prior results from particle colliders have all but ruled out the Higgs in the range below 114GeV and above 141GeV.

The Higgs is in the Standard Model. The Standard Model is the deepest known understanding of reality. There's a very good reason why many believe the Higgs particle exists: the Standard Model is a huge experimental success, but minus the Higgs particle, it falls apart. As far as we can tell, for a particle to have a mass, a Higgs must be there.

Comments (5) RSS

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Congratulations Charles, for posting something about the Higgs boson without using the odious "God particle" nickname.

I'm rooting for the folks at CERN, but am quietly dreading the popular media portrayals; "GOD PARTICLE DISCOVERED!" and the inevitable use by scientific illiterates to say that "Science proves God exists".

Posted by Lynx on December 5, 2011 at 6:14 AM

I'll admit I've been rooting against the Higgs.

Posted by Eric from Boulder on December 5, 2011 at 8:24 AM

I want my gravity gun.

Posted by OuterCow on December 5, 2011 at 8:40 AM

Thanks for the post Charles.

Posted by cracked on December 5, 2011 at 9:34 AM

@1: As I understand it, the "god particle" nickname began as a joke at religion's expense: it's everywhere, but it's (almost) impossible to prove it exists. Unlike the Higgs, though, solutions to the problem of suffering, the euthyphro dilemma, etc. aren't going to condense out of particle accelerators no matter how many electron-volts we throw at them.

Posted by Chronos Tachyon