Has LHC Seen a Hint of the Higgs?

gbrumfiel writes "Researchers at two detectors at the Large Hadron Collider are seeing something unusual. The signal is faint, but it could be from the long-sought Higgs particle. The Higgs is part of the mechanism that gives other particles mass, and it also unifies the electromagnetic and electroweak forces. No one is willing to declare it found just yet, but the new data from the CMS and ATLAS detectors are an independent, 'tantalizing' hint of what's to come. The results were presented today at HEP-2011 in Grenoble, France."

Comments

Uh Huh

[MightyMartian]

I'll hold my breath on this one. We've been fed the "we think we've seen Higgs" enough times now that until some repeatable data comes down the line, I'm just going to assume its screwy instrumentation or glitches.

Re:Uh Huh

[Flyerman]

This is actually a feature of the VP of PR's calendar. It has informed him that it's time to make some more noise and let everyone know that the LHC is still there.

Re:Uh Huh

[The_Wilschon]

Nobody who is a scientist (except possibly for inflammatory gossip addicts like Dorigo) is claiming anything remotely resembling a discovery. Nature is, in my opinion, highly irresponsible for posting things like this, precisely because it leads to reactions like yours. It isn't screwy instrumentation or glitches, it isn't a discovery, it isn't an exclusion, it isn't a bird or a plane or superman, it's just a result that is not yet conclusive.

Electromagnetic and electroweak

[mtinsley]

it also unifies the electromagnetic and electroweak forces

Doesn't electroweak already encompass electromagnetic? Should that be 'unifies the electromagnetic and weak forces'?

Re:Electromagnetic and electroweak

[mswhippingboy]

I believe you are correct. Electroweak IS the unified description of the electromagnetic and weak forces.

Not even found the Higgs yet

[Roger W Moore]

It hasn't opened a wormhole to another dimension yet...

We also have not found the Higgs yet there is not enough data to distinguish this from a fluctuation in the background. Frankly I'm appalled at Nature for printing wild, inflammatory speculation like this. If their editors have this level of ignorance of science you have to question what sort of decisions they are making regarding the journal itself...not that many particle physics papers are typically submitted there: perhaps this is why!

Re:Not even found the Higgs yet

[Chris Burke]

They didn't say they found the Higgs and acknowledged there wasn't enough data for it to be conclusive. However at the reaction rates at the LHC they should have enough data within months to confirm -- one way or another -- whether the Higgs exists. Some of the first data in that set shows events in the right range. Tantalizing, exciting, and thus newsworthy, but not a conclusion. This is what the article says, and it's all correct.

So I'm questioning your questioning of the Nature editors and this "ignorance of science" you attribute to them.

Re:Not even found the Higgs yet

[bcrowell]

We also have not found the Higgs yet there is not enough data to distinguish this from a fluctuation in the background.

Right. The Nature article has no quantitative description of the statistics, but this blog does. Note the stuff about the "look elsewhere effect." To understand what this means, imagine that you have a histogram with, say, a thousand channels in it, and let's imagine the null hypothesis, which is that in truth the histogram has nothing in it but a smoothly varying background, no peaks. But there is noise, and statistically a one-in-a-thousand fluctuation is about 3 standard deviations. That means that out of a thousand bins in your histogram, you expect to get roughly one with a +3 sigma fluctuation in it that could look like a peak. So if you run this experiment and get a 3-sigma peak, your result should be published as "we saw nothing." Taking into account the look elsewhere effect, the statistics in this experiment are nowhere near the level you'd want in order to claim detection of the Higgs -- and the collaborations involved are not claiming that.

Re:I've Got a Question

[jfengel]

Seeing its existence is an important confirmation of the Standard Model. In that sense, nothing happens when you find it, since we've been using the Standard Model for decades. It's not like we waited to confirm the whole thing before making predictions with it.

It would mean that we could STOP doing other things, i.e. looking at some alternatives to the Standard Model that don't incorporate the Higgs. (Or rather, incorporate different variations of the Higgs, including multiple Higgses.)

Once you find it, you can work on narrowing down its mass, which is something the Standard Model doesn't predict. Once you know that, you can start producing Higgs and see how it interacts with other particles. Again, when it confirms what you already suspect, it closes off some avenues of alternative research. Even better, when you find something unexpected, you start looking down that route.

Re:I've Got a Question

[MightyMartian]

You get confirmation of the Standard Model, and more basic research, whose dividends you probably cannot perceive ahead of time. Unless, of course, you're one of those fucktards who actually believes basic research is useless.

Re:I've Got a Question

[modmans2ndcoming]

considering the national ignition facility has achieved fusion using laser beams and deuterium pellets and has been moving toward net positive energy rates that indicate they will reach ignition with in the next year save for mechanical malfunctions, I would say, we have fusion.

Re:I've Got a Question

[jfengel]

The Higgs self-interacts, like gluons do. Renormalization prevents it from becoming infinite, and it converges to a finite value, but it makes the math very ugly.