On July 4th CERN will hold a seminar where ATLAS and CMS will present their latest findings on the search for the Higgs boson. There’s a reasonable chance that either or both experiments will see a 5 sigma excess, and this would be enough to claim a “discovery”. One of my US friends at CERN called this day Higgsdependence Day, and all over the USA people will be celebrating with fireworks and barbecues. (Okay, perhaps they will be celebrating something else. My boss tells me he might tar and feather me as the token British member of the group…)
CERN is not the only lab to be holding a seminar. Today at 09:00 CDT Fermilab will be announcing the latest results from CDF and D0. Rumors suggest a 3 sigma excess (technically an “observation”) in the interesting region. So if you can spare the time I’d recommend you listen in on the announcement. You can see the webcast information here.
In anticipation of the CERN seminar, when I came to my office this morning I found a bottle of champagne with a label hastily pasted to the back. It seems these might be placed alongside fire extinguishers in every office at CERN! (You can get your own label here.)
No Higgs seminar is complete without a bottle of Champagne, just in case!
For those of us who can’t get enough of the Higgs boson and want to brush up on the basics I would recommend the following show, put out by the BBC. This contains the latest results from the 2011 searches and it goes into quite a bit of depth about why we think the Higgs boson exists and what to expect from the 2012 searches.
Finally for those keeping score I still have $20 riding on a non-discovery. If a 5 sigma excess is seen on Wednesday there is a bit more work that needs to be done to show that it is the Standard Model Higgs, and that would probably take until the end of 2012 running. So my $20 is safe… for now.
Tags: ATLAS, CDF, CMS, DZero, Higgs, Higgs boson, LHC, Tevatron
