LHC Powers Up To 4 TeV

An anonymous reader writes "Due to a decision made at Chamonix, the LHC will operate with a 4 TeV beam energy in 2012. This will allow them to collect as much data as possible (15 inverse femtobarns for ATLAS and CMS) before the whole accelerator complex gets shut down for about 20 months to prepare for even higher energies. 'By the time the LHC goes into its first long stop at the end of this year, we will either know that a Higgs particle exists or have ruled out the existence of a Standard Model Higgs,' said CERN's Research Director, Sergio Bertolucci. 'Either would be a major advance in our exploration of nature, bringing us closer to understanding how the fundamental particles acquire their mass, and marking the beginning of a new chapter in particle physics.'"

Comments

It's almost certainly there

[grimJester]

The bump around 125 is fairly close to a discovery already. The first time they release fully analyzed data at all this year will be enough for a five sigma discovery. After seeing what kind of lag they have between data gathering and release, I'd say the discovery will be announced in August.