On 7/12/2012 12:55 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 2:14 PM, Stephen P. King <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> I profoundly disagree. What was found was a curve when the raw data was
graphed in
a particular way. There is no proof that this curve is uniquely
representational of
some "particle".
The article certainly profoundly disagrees with your above statement:
"another equally likely option is that the data is evidence of a more exotic theory in
which the Higgs boson exists in several different forms. So the new particle might be
one of these, examples of these are a generic Higgs doublet or a triplet imposter. A
final option is based on the idea that particles can exist in mixtures. So the new data
does not show the Higgs but a mixture of it and some other particle."
All these possibilities would be much more exciting than just the discovery of the
vanilla Higgs, and the evidence that a new particle of some sort has been discovered is
just about as close to a "proof" as evidence EVER gets in physics which means the
evidence is excellent even if a bit less than Euclidean certainty. And if the particle
is not the Higgs that would mean it is the first unexpected particle discovered in the
last 40 years, which would new physics has been experimentally found, which would be huge.
Here's a nice graphic showing how the results relate to the SM higgs and to other more
interesting possibilities:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2012/07/boson-spotters-guide-helps-you.html
Brent
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