Higgs Boson

Optimism, indeed down right thrilling is the word, regardless of the future end result.The LHC data is narrowing the range where the Higgs may be. But these results are also consistent with what would be expected if the Higgs does not exist.We are optimistic, actually quite giddy, that very soon now we will find the beast or find that the thing does not exist at all (at least not in the ranges the Standard Model expects). Either way the impact on our theories in physics will be staggering and that is the thrilling part.

Well, I think the most obvious answer is that the Higgs boson's neck in not all that long.Besides, with a giraffe you look for, well, a giraffe. With the Higgs you can't see it, it decays too quickly, so you have to look for the debris created from a decaying Higgs.Besides, there are a number of different ways a Higgs can decay so there are a number of different patterns that could be produced.Besides, there are a number of other things that can present these same various decay patterns and the standard model tells us how often each type of thing will present what probability of what kind of pattern.So you look at all the trillions of collisions looking at all the decay patterns seeing so many of this with so many of that and what's not a Higgs over here and what might or might not be a Higgs over there subtracting out the probabilities of the not and the might not be Higgs leaving some percentage of the might be a Higgs kind of signals.Now nature (the actual dynamics of the proton-proton hits), equipment variances and all kids of other noise and uncertainty all conspire to produce error bars in the data. The good thing is, the more data you can collect the more these extraneous error things can be identified and corrected for leaving smaller error bars.So you have a whole bunch of data and all the math and the error bars telling you that the left over signatures after subtracting out all the other stuff gives an 80% chance that what is left is due to Higgs created signatures.Not good enough. 80% is like a "4 sigma." So collect more data and more data and analyze more data and more data until you reach 5 sigma which under the normal bell curve is sooo far out to the right tail end of the curve, about .999999 certainty, that there is virtually no possibility that the signals left belong to anything other than the Higgs.So now, and only now, can you say you found the Higgs.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.