Here’s a follow-up to Mel’s recent post about the Higgs boson. This morning the folks at CERN announced “hints” of the Higgs in their data at a mass of about 124 GeV/c^2. There are two different experiments looking for the Higgs, and they both see something at the same energy, which is very suggestive. Neither signal is above the 2-sigma level, however (i.e., 2 standard deviations above the background).  I interpret this to mean they are 95% sure it’s there, which is pretty sure! The conventions of particle physics require a 5-sigma signal to make it a solid claim, though. 5-sigma would correspond to 99.99994% certainty, which as far as I am concerned is as sure as you are going to get about anything. Another year’s data collection should get them to that level.

Is this an exciting result? I have a bit of a prejudice here (and a lot of ignorance), so I’ll be provocative and say no, not really. The “Standard Model” predicted the existence of the Higgs. That model works pretty well, and it would have been much more of a surprise if the Higgs wasn’t there. In a sense all this result does is demonstrate that the model that everyone believed in is still right. On the other hand, a confirmation that the Standard Model still works tells us (them, actually; I have nothing to do with this field) that it is the right place to start from in exploring even higher energies, so it’s certainly helpful.