Higgs boson may be a mirage, scientists hint

[rug]

GENEVA (Reuters) - Scientists chasing a particle they believe may have played a vital role in creation of the universe indicated Monday they were coming to accept it might not exist after all.

But they stressed that if the so-called Higgs boson turns out to have been a mirage, the way would be open for advances into territory dubbed "new physics" to try to answer one of the great mysteries of the cosmos.

The CERN research centre, whose giant Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been the focus of the search, said it had reported to a conference in Mumbai that possible signs of the Higgs noted last month were now seen as less significant.

A number of scientists from the centre went on to make comments that raised the possibility that the mystery particle might not exist.

http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE77L5L420110822?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true

[mike_c]

1. it's an exciting time to be a physicist!

eom

[dtexdem]

2. Oh, sure, but then physicists will find that the whole universe is a mirage ...

and then we'll all poof out of existence. ;-)

[Tesha]

3. Well, the Good News is we wouldn't have to worry about the next election! (NT)

[GeorgeGist]

4. Oh sure ...

next they'll be telling us that God maybe a mirage.

[rug]

5. I was tempted to post this in R/T but it would devolve into a fight beteen bosonists and abosonists

[laconicsax]

6. Ha!

BTW: I believe the term is new-abosonists.

[Thor_MN]

7. I'm under the impression that bosonists and abosonists frown on devolution

and prefer that particles are created...

[eridani]

8. Like Alpine Kat said in the Large Hadron Collider rap--

Now the Higgs is the boson everybody talks about
And that's one sure thing this machine will sort out
If the Higgs exists they ought to see it right away
If it doesn't the scientists will finally say
"There is no Niggs! We need new physics to account for why
Things have mass. Something in our standard model went awry."

[truedelphi]

9. Quite brilliant, there, eridani.

I do wish that Douglas Adams could still weigh in on all this.

[eridani]

10. The rap on YouTube has a couple of million hits

Google it for the rest of the really neat verses.

[girl gone mad]

11. Still a waiting game.

We are all sitting around waiting, jumping at any and every rumor.

As much as I would love to have the Higgs ruled out now, it will take time before they stop searching for it and move on to test more interesting models. Even then, unless a new physics cause of electroweak symmetry breaking can be convincingly determined, there are interpretations of SM Higgs which allow for the failure to locate its signal.

[laconicsax]

13. Shh! Nuance isn't flashy enough.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

12. Oh give me some higgy pudding and a happy nuclear!! This article was written in

2008, consider that if you will. I have considered it and see this writer as having a knack for stating the obvious, years in advance.

The Six Billion Dollar LHC Circus



http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=gzhqr188
Science has become an international circus. And opening day for “The Greatest Show on Earth” has arrived. In the 27 km main circus ring we have the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project, starting up after $6 billion dollars and thirty years of development. Before the show the clowns have warmed up the audience with fantastic stories of what we might see. But why should we take clowns seriously?

The BBC Horizon program, “The $6 billion Dollar Experiment,” documents the LHC experiment. The LHC accelerates beams of protons in opposite directions around a circular 27 km underground racetrack and then smashes them together head-on. The expense comes from the need to reach particle energies seven times that of earlier particle colliders and to construct a massive particle detector ‘cathedral’ underground. The energy density reached in the experiment is thought to mimic the earliest moments of the big bang – the origin of the universe.

Most of the experimenters involved are looking for the ‘God particle’. The Times Online reported on April 8, “The mysterious boson postulated by Professor Higgs, of the University of Edinburgh, has become so fundamental to physics that it is often nicknamed the ‘God particle’. After more than 40 years of research, and billions of pounds, scientists have yet to prove that it is real. But Professor Higgs, 78, now believes the search is nearly over.”