(December 13, 2011 at 7:16 pm)popeyespappy Wrote: Would one of you theoretical physicists types please explain what this might mean to the standard model? Does it lend itself to supersymmetry, or as this post suggests kill it?
If confirmed of course.
From the link in the OP.
Quote:A rumour that reached our comment section suggests that a signal for the Higgs boson has been seen at 125 GeV with 2-3 sigma significance. This would be a great result if confirmed because at this mass the standard model has problems with vacuum stability that are likely to require supersymmetry or something similar to stabilize. If on the other hand the Higgs were at 140 GeV we would be left with a simple but unsatisfying model that could exist without modification up to energies well beyond anything we can explore in man-made experiments. In other words we might never be able to detect anything new. A Higgs that is just 15 GeV lighter is a different story altogether, so theorists will be very happy if that is the answer.
There is a controversy about whether the 125 GeV Higgs leads to beyond SM. Peter Voit has an interesting post on that:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=4262
