The Higgs Boson at 125 GeV, or much ado about nothing

[little_monkey]

The net is on fire with rumours of a Higgs boson at 125 GeV. Is this another instance of crying wolf? Hopefully not. Next date on your calendar: Dec 13th.

http://blog.vixra.org/2011/12/02/higgs-r...o-125-gev/

[popeyespappy]

Supersymmetry, that ought to make you happy Joseph.

[little_monkey]

That hurts.

[toro]

Let's wait and see. Thanks for posting!

[little_monkey]

An article in the Guardian, with several prominent physicists commenting on the rumour:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2...boson-real

[little_monkey]

It looks like the rumour was confirmed, a Higgs boson at 125 GeV, with a 2.8 sigma.

Here's the best graph that includes Atlas+CMS+Tevatron + LEP (from Phil Gibbs)

[downbeatplumb]

I'd wait a while before breaking out the champagne, but it looks promising.

[popeyespappy]

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.

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.

[houseofcantor]

The net is on fire with rumours of a Higgs boson at 125 GeV. Is this another instance of crying wolf? Hopefully not. Next date on your calendar: Dec 13th.

http://blog.vixra.org/2011/12/02/higgs-r...o-125-gev/

That's a blog right there. Thanks for the hook-up. Here's the Lubos perspective. Here's Not Even Wrong weighing in; and last but not least, Tommaso at Science2.0.

Here's a snippet of Tommaso's perspective: I will explain why below, using some of the most important graphs shown by Fabiola Gianotti and Guido Tonelli today; but before I continue, let me tell you why I have stressed "Standard Model" above. A particle which behaves like the Standard Model Higgs, both in the way it is produced and in the way it decays, cannot in my opinion be considered a hint of Supersymmetry just because some of the SUSY theories do predict that the lightest of the 5 or more Higgs particles will behave like a Standard Model Higgs boson!

So, SUSY enthusiasts should remain quiet for the time being, especially since large swaths of parameter space are being directly canceled by the CMS and ATLAS searches -for instance, a 500 GeV gluino is by now almost totally excluded (it remains possible in very specialized and ad-hoc scenarios) and Gordy Kane no later than one year ago was willing to put his money on it.

But let's not divagate. The Higgs. The Higgs (SM) was predicted to be light from the observation of many observable quantities connected to it - dozens of them, to be sure. Most of the precise results of the LEP experiments allowed to fit for the Higgs mass, once supplemented with information on the W and top quark masses. And the answer was unequivocal: the Higgs must be light, most probably below 161 GeV or so (the LEP electroweak working group indicates this in their web page, although it is probably not updated with the most recent information).

So let me now answer the question I posed at the beginning to myself: why do I believe this is firm evidence of the existence of a SM Higgs at 124-126 GeV.

I love this stuff. This is forum denizen Galileo on the "what we lack" thread:

this is exactly what I am talking about.

My friend who was also once religious and I are trying to write music entirely dedicated to concepts of atheism to try and create the same uplifting feeling that religious music does.


that was one of the main reasons I remained a believer so long, to be honest. the music. for a singer, it's amazing. there is no reason we can't have the same though.

I mean, this Higgs stuff... there ain't never been a cathedral that's worth a parking space at CERN; the Holy of Holies produces these kinds of hadith:

...and for what? To know us.

---

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.

Of the three links I just posted, Lubos Motl calls himself "the last happy string theorist;" you can be sure he has a tinge of bias for SUSY. Tommaso speaks clearly with a bias against SUSY. If you're into this stuff, Science 2.0 is a hotbed of working scientists; you can see the volleys in the comments to the Tommaso link.

I'm not "in the field;" I'm a naive philosopher. But a Higgs is a kind of "anti-SUSY" in itself.

---

And looking at that graph up there... this is from the Lubos perspective:

[little_monkey]

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.

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