Monday, December 19, 2011

The Need For New Physics, With Or Without The Higgs

John Ellis has written an intriguing opinion piece which argued that whether the Higgs boson is found or not, there is already a need for new physics beyond the Standard Model (link may be open only for a limited time).

It is too early to say whether these promising hints will be confirmed, but if they are, many people would take this to be a validation of the standard model of particle physics. There have been previous indirect signs from other data that the Higgs boson probably weighs less than 150 GeV, and CERN's possible observation would be in line with that. But I am a contrarian. I argue that whether or not the Higgs boson exists, we already know that there must be physics beyond the standard model.
I think most particle physicists are acutely aware that the Standard Model, as it stands, may need to be changed. But whether this is in the form of a tweak, or a major overhaul, that is still up in the air. The outcome of the Higgs search will certainly be a contributing factor to this.

Zz.

2 comments:

T. said...

Ellis' article is not free available any more, could you tell in which ways the standard model is unsatisfactory?

ZapperZ said...

I've received several "comments" on this with people trying to sell some theory or another. Look people, if you think you have a valid theory, PUBLISH IT FIRST IN A PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL!

Anyone who has followed this blog for any considerable period of time will realize that I simply have no time to entertain or advertise some idea or theory that came out of nowhere. So if you think that you could simply push something and have it appear here, you have wasted your time. It takes me less than a second to hit the DELETE button!

Zz.