Will scientists at CERN announce discovery of "The God Particle" Wednesday?

[LongTomH]

The talk on the web is that physicists working with the Large Hadron Collider are set to announce probably discovery of the Higgs Boson, frequently referred to as "the God Particle" (The scientist who came up with that term has regretted it ever since!).

There's a good article for the general reader at Discovery News: Higgs Boson Hunt: "We've Discovered Something":

After four years of high-energy particle demolition inside the detectors of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), are physicists on the verge of announcing one of the most significant discoveries of our time? If you've seen this morning's headlines, then you'd think the answer is a huge yes. But in typical quantum physics style, we may have to wait a little longer for definitive proof for the elusive Higgs boson.

On Wednesday (July 4), scientists heading two major experiments at the LHC plan to announce their most recent findings at a physics conference in Australia with accompanying meetings in Geneva, Switzerland. What's more, senior scientists at European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) are hinting that there is strong evidence in their data that suggests the Higgs boson exists.

Scientists are saying 'strong evidence' rather than "We've got it!" That's partly because scientists like to be exact in their language rather than 'hedging their bets' as the rest of us usually do. What they've really found are a number of 'events' showing up in particle counters for the ATLAS and CMS experiments attached to the LHC that cluster around the energy levels predicted for the Higgs.

One statistical spike, at around the energy of one predicted variety of Higgs boson, has been growing stronger and more defined over the months, but at what point does that "spike" become a discovery and not just background noise? As this is a lesson in statistics of huge numbers, physicists have a way of categorizing how strong the signal is.

So far, the strength of this particular Higgs signal hasn't exceeded 4.3-sigma -- which relates to a 99.996 percent chance of the signal being real (and a 0.0004 percent chance that it's just noise). A 5-sigma signal, on the other hand, is regarded as the "Gold Standard" in particle physics, relating to a 99.99994 percent chance that the signal is real (and only a 0.00006 percent chance of it being noise). Only when the signal hits that magical 5-sigma standard can a discovery be announced.

Like I said, scientists like to be exact in their language - 5 sigma exact!

I recommend you follow the links in the article to find more information about both the Higgs and the Large Hadron Collider.

Edited to add: There's another view of the discovery of the Higgs at Wired.com: How the Discovery of the Higgs Boson Breaks Physics, which has some interesting discussion of the Higgs Boson, the Standard Model of Physics and Supersymmetry.

[caraher]

1. Regarding the last link...

Since i don't have a horse in this race, I'm perfectly happy for LHC not to find evidence of supersymmetry. If nothing else, it would be a slap in the face to a smug theorist I know who liked to say that all that's left to do in physics was determine the mass of the Higgs and discover the supersymmetric particles (which, of course, had to exist). Wait, maybe I do have a rooting interest...

[Warpy]

2. It's rather a contest between sets of smug theorists

and whatever is announced on Wednesday, some of them will get their faces righteously slapped.

I don't have a horse in this race, either, just a part of my brain that regards all this stuff as utterly fascinating and amazing that "bang two rocks together" physics has come this far, at all.

[Posteritatis]

3. Anyone who says "all that's left to do in physics" is a pretty lousy theorist. (nt)