Everybody's Talking

In case you missed it, about old Higgsy.

He does seem to have been made (NEW).

I learned via Physics World that CERN will hold a press conference on Wednesday July 4 to give an “Update on the search for the Higgs Boson”. More information has just appeared (including a press release here), showing that there will be a 2 hour seminar on the results starting at 9am Geneva time, followed by a press conference at 11am.

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.

Good on that. Now what? Peter notes that CERN made its last major "discovery" of a new particle 28 years ago - and that turned out badly. Extrapolating, we should expect another in, say, 2210.

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