Physics Community Afire With Rumors of Higgs Boson Discovery | Wired Science | W

sirlark writes: The latest rumors circulating around the physics blogosphere suggest that scientists with the Large Hadron Collider will announce the discovery of the Higgs boson within weeks. “The bottom line though is now clear: There’s something there which looks like a Higgs is supposed to look,” wrote mathematician Peter Woit on his blog, Not Even Wrong.

And this means ....?

[schwit1]

If the Higgs Boson existence is confirmed, it changes or validates or advances what about our known universe?

Re:

[Deadstick]

It confirms the Standard Model.

Re:

[Jane Q. Public]

"It confirms the Standard Model."

It does nothing of the sort. It confirms one assumption of the Standard Model, but other assumptions have increasingly been shown to be unlikely.

Re:

[Jane Q. Public]

I should qualify that. If you are referring to the Standard Model only in the context of particle physics, then yes the Higgs would be the last particle of the Standard Model to be discovered, making one model closer to "the answer".

But you must keep in mind that part of the evidence behind the Standard Model is cosmological, and at the same time we have been finding the particles that make it all happen, we have increasingly been seeing evidence that they do not BEHAVE according to the original model.

Not Even Wrong

[FrootLoops]

From Not Even Wrong [wired.com],

Reports from the experiments indicate that at least one of them, if not both, will reach the 5 sigma level of significance for the Higgs signal, when they combine 2011 and 2012 data and the most sensitive channels. So, this will definitely be the long-awaited Higgs discovery announcement, and party-time for HEP physicists.

This would be huge, but of course some caution is needed since it's all still rumor-y. Having two experiments with the same result is encouraging though.