If you need assistance, please send an email to forum at 4hv dot org. To ensure your email is not marked as spam, please include the phrase "4hv help" in the subject line. You can also find assistance via IRC, at irc.shadowworld.net, room #hvcomm.
Support 4hv.org!
Donate:
4hv.org is hosted on a dedicated server. Unfortunately, this server costs and we rely on the help of site members to keep 4hv.org running. Please consider donating. We will place your name on the thanks list and you'll be helping to keep 4hv.org alive and free for everyone. Members whose names appear in red bold have donated recently. Green bold denotes those who have recently donated to keep the server carbon neutral.
Special Thanks To:
Aaron Holmes
Aaron Wheeler
Adam Horden
Alan Scrimgeour
Andre
Andrew Haynes
Anonymous000
asabase
Austin Weil
barney
Barry
Bert Hickman
Bill Kukowski
Blitzorn
Brandon Paradelas
Bruce Bowling
BubeeMike
Byong Park
Cesiumsponge
Chris F.
Chris Hooper
Corey Worthington
Derek Woodroffe
Dalus
Dan Strother
Daniel Davis
Daniel Uhrenholt
datasheetarchive
Dave Billington
Dave Marshall
David F.
Dennis Rogers
drelectrix
Dr. John Gudenas
Dr. Spark
E.TexasTesla
eastvoltresearch
Eirik Taylor
Erik Dyakov
Erlend^SE
Finn Hammer
Firebug24k
GalliumMan
Gary Peterson
George Slade
GhostNull
Gordon Mcknight
Graham Armitage
Grant
GreySoul
Henry H
IamSmooth
In memory of Leo Powning
Jacob Cash
James Howells
James Pawson
Jeff Greenfield
Jeff Thomas
Jesse Frost
Jim Mitchell
jlr134
Joe Mastroianni
John Forcina
John Oberg
John Willcutt
Jon Newcomb
klugesmith
Leslie Wright
Lutz Hoffman
Mads Barnkob
Martin King
Mats Karlsson
Matt Gibson
Matthew Guidry
mbd
Michael D'Angelo
Mikkel
mileswaldron
mister_rf
Neil Foster
Nick de Smith
Nick Soroka
nicklenorp
Nik
Norman Stanley
Patrick Coleman
Paul Brodie
Paul Jordan
Paul Montgomery
Ped
Peter Krogen
Peter Terren
PhilGood
Richard Feldman
Robert Bush
Royce Bailey
Scott Fusare
Scott Newman
smiffy
Stella
Steven Busic
Steve Conner
Steve Jones
Steve Ward
Sulaiman
Thomas Coyle
Thomas A. Wallace
Thomas W
Timo
Torch
Ulf Jonsson
vasil
Vaxian
vladi mazzilli
wastehl
Weston
William Kim
William N.
William Stehl
Wesley Venis
The aforementioned have contributed financially to the continuing triumph of 4hv.org. They are deserving of my most heartfelt thanks.
Registered Member #3414
Joined: Sun Nov 14 2010, 05:05PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4245
Higgs boson faces the perils of predictability 13:08 22 August 2012 by Lisa Grossman
Fulfilling expectations is normally a good thing. But the fact that the newly discovered Higgs boson is behaving exactly as expected is cutting its chances of lighting a path to new physics.
The world rejoiced in July when physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN announced a new particle with some, but not all, of the properties predicted for the Higgs. It was the final member of the standard model of particle physics left to be discovered.
Questions quickly followed the confetti. The particle was not observed directly but through the particles it should decay into, not all of which were seen. This raised hopes that the Higgs might have different properties to those prescribed by the standard model. Because the model is known to be lacking – it offers no explanations for gravity or dark matter – such deviations might provide clues to these mysterious entities.
Now results from Fermilab's Tevatron collider in Batavia, Illinois, which shut down last year, show the Higgs decaying into one of the missing particle sets, a pair of bottom quarks.
Wiggle room
This boosts the standard model status of the Higgs. "In my view, it's important evidence that the particle which has been seen is the standard model Higgs boson," says Dmitri Denisov of the Tevatron's D0 experiment. "It's not something else."
The result is also interesting because the LHC has so far only glimpsed the Higgs decaying into other bosons – photons, Ws and Zs. This confirmed that the Higgs gives mass to these "force carrying" particles, but left open the possibility that the particles that make up matter, like quarks, could get their mass some other way. The latest Tevatron result suggests otherwise.
The Tevatron signal is relatively weak: it only has a statistical significance of 3 sigma, short of the 5 sigma that was required for the LHC to claim its discovery of the Higgs. What's more, the Higgs still has not been glimpsed decaying into tau particles, as prescribed by the standard model. Nonetheless, the wiggle room for an exotic Higgs is shrinking fast.
This site is powered by e107, which is released under the GNU GPL License. All work on this site, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License. By submitting any information to this site, you agree that anything submitted will be so licensed. Please read our Disclaimer and Policies page for information on your rights and responsibilities regarding this site.
Higgs boson faces the perils of predictability
