According to this talk by CERN's Fabio Zwirner, 1 inverse femtobarn is sufficient to eliminate a Higgs above 120 GeV. Now, the LHC has achieved that value a few days ago. So I am looking forward to the corresponding data analysis!
Above all, I am looking forward to see the faces of CERN managers when they will admit that there is no Higgs boson. And to the Homeric laughter that will follow across the world.
The LHC will then be renamed "Tunnel of Babylon". (The expression is my copyright...)
Or are they holding back the result already, to avoid loosing face?
Losing face? Why wouldn't confirming the non-existence of the Higgs boson be as important an achievement as confirming the existence of one?
ReplyDeleteEither way, it would be money well spent.
I agree. Why is this idea of loosing face? LHC is a great project.
ReplyDeleteThey will loose face because they collected 5 billion Euro of taxpayers money to build a machine in order to discover a Higgs (and collect a Nobel prize). This false promise will not materialize. The same will happen to all the other false promises they made (Susy, dark matter, etc.).
ReplyDeleteWhen thousands of researchers, together, lie for thirty years, they receive billions, from dozens of governments. They will loose face indeed.
I really think they didn't build to find the Higgs, or susy, or whatever. They're looking for whatever there is - and 'nothing' is just as good an answer.
ReplyDeleteI strongly feel there is no 'they' here, rather 'us' (the taxpayers :-)
To think of it, how would you test the strand model without the LHC?
It would be the most profound result if LHC could "prove" that the Higgs boson does not exist.
ReplyDeleteYes and no. It would be profound.
ReplyDeleteBut the fact does not change that the LHC was build to find it before the US, and that this promise was (most probably) a lie. It was built by crooks.