Has the Higgs Boson Particle Field Been Hiding in Plain Sight?

sciencehabit writes with a link to the ScienceNow site, noting an article saying the Higgs boson may already have been found in previous observations of the known universe. A theorist at Michigan state is arguing that scientists may have already found evidence for the elusive particle. The key appears to be that the particles that make up the Higgs field are of various 'strengths', and some of those particles may tug on others very weakly. "The lightest Higgs can be very light indeed, but it would not have been seen at [CERN's Large Electron-Positron (LEP)], because LEP experimenters were looking for an energetic collision that made a Z that then spit out a Higgs. That wouldn't happen very often if the lightest Higgs and the Z hardly interact. 'Just within the simplest supersymmetric model, there's still room for Higgs that is missed,' Yuan says. However, this lightweight Higgs is not exactly the Higgs everyone is looking for, says Marcela Carena, a theorist at Fermilab. 'The Higgs they are talking about is not the one responsible for giving mass to the W and Z,' she says. It can't be because it hardly interacts with those particles, Carena says. Indeed, in Yuan's model, the role of mass-giver falls to one of the heavier Higgses, which is still heavier than the LEP limit, she notes."

Comments

the last place you look

[tverbeek]

Turns out it was under the couch all this time.

Re:the last place you look

[onion2k]

I've got one here on my desk. Curiously it looks, and smells, just like an orange.

Tastes like an orange too.

Actually, come to think of it, I think this might be an orange.

Re:the last place you look

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep ... Were all doomed!

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson_(fiction) "In the science fantasy series Lexx, one character points out that although all-out nuclear war sometimes destroys all life on planets as advanced as Earth, it is much more common for such planets to be obliterated by physicists attempting to determine the precise mass of the Higgs boson particle, since the moment the mass is known the planet will instantly collapse into a nugget of super-dense matter "roughly the size of a pea."

Re:Higgses

[IndustrialComplex]

Nasty Hobbitses...and their mean Higgses make Precious feel so heavy.

Re:Higgses

[Shadow Wrought]

Higgses ...must be one of the ugliest plural forms I've recently encountered.

You say that now, but she'll look better after a couple of drinkses.

will CERN become a theme park now?

[petes_PoV]

So they won't need their brand-spanking new accelerator after all!

Maybe we could put it to good use as a theme park ride instead. Imaging all those superconducting magnets accelerating your cart up to 99.99% of the speed of light - what a ride that would be.

With the relativistic effects, you might even be able to come out of the ride before you went in.

The fact that it operates in a vacuum might be a problem ... have to think about that.

Re:For those that went "wtf?!"

[DirkGently]

So are you. ;-)

Re:For those that went "wtf?!"

[mortonda]

you too... ;)

What's this ... ?

[MrNougat]

What's this ... behind your ear ... ?

Oh, look! It's a Higgs boson!

Hiding right in front of us?

[PinkyDead]

Clearly the Higgs Boson was contained within an SEP field.

Which suggests that we are one step closer to actually creating an infinite improbability drive - the ramifications of which are... well I don't know, but they are at least big, possibly huge.

Re:For those that went "wtf?!"

[DeVilla]

Quit tormenting the youngsters.

Re:Am I missing something?

[ColdWetDog]

Lets take the simple case of a scalar potential V(r) which is given by the integral over the vector field F(r) along some path C. Hence, V(r) is proportional to 1/r for both gravity and electromagnetism.

Simple .

I don't think that word means what you think it means.