Have we found the Higgs boson particle? (2)
A few days ago, I did a posting explaining that today there would be some sort of announcement about the current state of the search for the elusive Higgs boson particle which is predicted to exist in the Standard Model exposition of how sub-atomic particles interact with one another. So what did the scientists have to say?
“The excess is most compatible with a Standard Model Higgs in the vicinity of 124 GeV and below, but the statistical significance is not large enough to say anything conclusive. As of today, what we see is consistent either with a background fluctuation or with the presence of the boson.”
Some more information here.
I am indebted to my friend Nick Hobson for the following joke:
A Higgs boson walks into a church, and the priest says, “Get out! We don’t want your sort in here!”
So the Higgs boson replies, “But without me, how can you have Mass?”
And, in a similar vein, another friend Andy Rickford contributes this joke:
The barman says “We don’t serve your sort in here” and a neutrino walks into the bar.