May 1, 2016 07:41 PM
https://aeon.co/opinions/physics-is-on-t...-discovery
EXCERPT: Excitement is in the air at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the powerful accelerator at CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics) near Geneva. Last year, researchers there recorded faint but extremely promising signs of what could be a new particle that does not fit within the current theoretical model. The LHC is now about to resume operation after being shut down since December for annual maintenance. If its next run confirms the existence of the new particle, that could open the long-sought passage to ‘the new physics’ – and, hopefully, answer some big, longstanding questions.
[...] The mere announcement of what might be the first signs of a new particle, delivered at the end-of-the-year LHC seminar on 15 December 2015, sent theorists into a frenzy. Expectations are so high that there are already 338 scientific papers on the possible nature of this new particle. But without experimental clues, there is no way to determine which of the 338 models – if any – is correct. As Alessandro Strumia, a theorist from CERN, recently put it in a review of the possibilities: ‘It could be anything or nothing!’ When the properties of the new particle become known, he anticipates a ‘massacre’ of theories as many ideas will be ruled out. No one knows yet what the successor to the Standard Model will look like, but we hope it will address at least some, if not all, the big questions left unanswered by the current theory....
EXCERPT: Excitement is in the air at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the powerful accelerator at CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics) near Geneva. Last year, researchers there recorded faint but extremely promising signs of what could be a new particle that does not fit within the current theoretical model. The LHC is now about to resume operation after being shut down since December for annual maintenance. If its next run confirms the existence of the new particle, that could open the long-sought passage to ‘the new physics’ – and, hopefully, answer some big, longstanding questions.
[...] The mere announcement of what might be the first signs of a new particle, delivered at the end-of-the-year LHC seminar on 15 December 2015, sent theorists into a frenzy. Expectations are so high that there are already 338 scientific papers on the possible nature of this new particle. But without experimental clues, there is no way to determine which of the 338 models – if any – is correct. As Alessandro Strumia, a theorist from CERN, recently put it in a review of the possibilities: ‘It could be anything or nothing!’ When the properties of the new particle become known, he anticipates a ‘massacre’ of theories as many ideas will be ruled out. No one knows yet what the successor to the Standard Model will look like, but we hope it will address at least some, if not all, the big questions left unanswered by the current theory....