Higgs particle that might have been, looks less like it was.
Inside the Large Hadron Collider
The excitement a few weeks ago about possible signs of the Higgs boson having been found at the Large Hadron Collider has dimmed considerably. That’s exactly what many experts warned about back then.
BBC News‘s authoritative Pallab Ghosh writes that new data to be presented later this week at a conference in Mumbai “all but eliminate” the possibility that the ultra-fundamental particle will be found in the energy range where the earlier evidence looked so promising. He goes on with a fair bit of added detail and background.
John Butterworth of the UK Guardian offers this helpful precis to his take: “If you like your science neatly packaged as near-certain, fully-understood results, look away now.”
Kerry Sheridan of AFP calls the Higgs “the greatest riddle in all of physics.” That might be going too far. How about the origin of the singularity that became the Big Bang, Higgses and all?
Graham Smith of the Daily Mail in the UK says the Higgs “if it exists, is running out of places to hide.”
The Tracker couldn’t find any U.S. accounts of this as of mid-day Tuesday. Are the Yanks averse to downer stories?
-Boyce Rensberger
