Many news media round the world such as this http://www.scientificamerican.com/a

Question

Many news media round the world such as this http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=higgs-lhc have reported the possible discovery of the Higgs at CERN, to be announced at a conference on the 4th July. Has the Higgs really been discovered or are these publicity stunts? If, it has been discovered what will be the impact on particle physics, if its existence has been disproved how will it affect theoretical physics and particle physics? I found a similiar question on Physics SE, but it is 4 months old, so I would like to know the what the current facts are as we know them.

Explanation / Answer

I don't think we should comment on wild rumours. On July 4th we'll know for sure.

Getting 5? evidence for a Higgs at 125GeV will only confirm what most of us already believe, so it won't make that much difference. What will be interesting is if the properties of the particle at 125GeV don't match the standard model Higgs. For example there have been suggestions that the production rate is a bit higher than the Standard Model predicts, though this is currently far from statistically significant.

The nightmare scenario is if the particle discovered fits exactly with SM predictions and there is no evidence for any physics beyond the Standard Model. That will leave a lot of people scratching their heads and wondering what to do next.

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