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Old 24-08-2011, 06:34 AM
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CraigS
Unpredictable

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Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Australia
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More quantitative info here ..

Quote:
Apart from a couple of narrow windows at mid-range masses, the LHC has now pretty much excluded Higgs bosons with masses between 145–466 GeV and finds no significant excess of events across the region 110–600 GeV. Direct searches at CERN's previous Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider, which shut down in 2000, excluded a Higgs lighter than 114 GeV, while fits to precision measurements of electroweak Standard Model parameters disfavour a Higgs heavier than 180 GeV.
Meanwhile, the latest results from Higgs searches at the Tevatron collider at Fermilab near Chicago, which is due to close down at the end of September, that were also shown at the Mumbai meeting exclude the regions 100–109 GeV and 156–177 GeV.
So, with this info, I'm not sure where else they can look, yet they seem to concentrating more searches between 110-130 GeV (?). One guy says it'll appear with more data ... then the next guy says the signal might become weaker with more data ..

So, presumably to avoid sending out (more) premature conflicting messages …
Quote:
With the LHC delivering data faster than the researchers can analyse them, physicists have decided against presenting an official combination of the ATLAS and CMS Higgs results until the end of this year's data-taking.
And then .. (gotta love this one) …
Quote:
"As head of the CMS Higgs group I can't hold 'religious' views on whether or not the Higgs exists," says Sharma. "But I'm not particularly fond of the Higgs hypothesis, which seems ad hoc; so if we don't find the Higgs, I'd be quite happy."
.."I'm not religious .. but if you insist, here's a religious statement" … "and, what's more, with this statement, I'm going to look good when we don't find it."

So standing back from it all, overall, are scientists way too obsessed with model predictions ?

Cheers
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