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CERN Announces Collider Startup Delay
perturbed1 writes "The 142nd session of the CERN Council saw Organizational Director General Robert Aymar announcing a delay in the activation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The installation will start up in May 2008, taking 'the first steps towards studying physics at a new high-energy frontier.' Such a delay was foreseen due to the quadrupole accident, which we've previously discussed. This gives extra time for Fermilab physicists to try to understand the latest interesting hints of the Higgs boson, as well as give much needed extra-time for the detectors at CERN to get ready for data taking. Given that it will be fall before the LHC detectors take any useful data from collisions at 14TeV, could Fermilab collect enough data for a 5-sigma discovery by then?"
No, I don't wish any harm to the scientists or their reputations. However, I think it would be fun if Gravity didn't fit so nicely in the Standard Model like everyone is hoping it will.
Your point is well taken in that in some ways it would be more interesting if the Higgs were not found, but in fact the Higgs does nothing to bring gravity into the Standard Model. Instead it would explain the symmetry breaking in the Electroweak interaction. (I.e. why the W and Z are massive while the photon in massless.) Without a Higgs, a new mechanism would be necessary to explain this.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
I'd like to point that the Higgs boson has NOTHING to do with gravity. The Standard Model, Higgs boson included, is a theory of the strong and electroweak interactions. The mass that fundamental particles have for virtue of their Higgs couplings is akin to an inertial mass only.
But I agree with you. I'd also hope for the non-existence of the Higgs boson. however, all odds are against us. There are some fundamental processes that can only be made sense of in the presence of a particle which looks very much like the Higgs. If I recall correctly, it was Chris Quigg that said that "if the Higgs boson does not exist, we'll need something much like it". But of course, with the Higgs come a lot of other issues (the hierarchy problem for instance), which open up a whole new area for physics.
What you are referring to is the 4th related article: "Search for Higgs 'God Particle' gets interesting." It had been rumored that Fermilab had seen something that they were keeping under wraps for the summer publication cycle. Speculation was that it was the Higgs Boson but turns out it was the Cascade B.
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