YES… no… yes… maybe. The Large Hadron Collider is back in business but the Higgs boson is proving as elusive as ever, teasing us with hints of its existence before fading away again.
If you’ve got Higgs fatigue, join the club. Some physicists worry that by fixating on it and other “known unknowns”, such as supersymmetry, the LHC might be missing other, more interesting, particles (see “Is the LHC throwing away too much data?”). By all means, hunt the Higgs – but not to the exclusion of other particles (see “11 particles that could change the cosmos”).
Meanwhile, the name “Higgs” might soon (partially) disappear. Peter Higgs was one of six physicists who came up with the idea in 1964 and moves are afoot to share the recognition. So we’re no longer hunting the Higgs but the much more exotic-sounding Englert-Brout-Higgs-Guralnik Hagen-Kibble particle.
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