Gibbs Bearish On Standard Model Higgs Boson Existence

Philip Gibbs, proprietor of viXra log, notes that there is a still a mass range from about 114 GeV to 130 GeV where a Higgs boson could be found.

So there is hope that some kind of Higgs particle is lurking in that region, but the signal is not strong. Some modified form of Higgs mechanism with multiplets may be a better fit to the data. If my predicted full combinations are correct a standard Higgs may already be all but ruled out even at low mass. A SUSY multiplet can still work but searches for MSSM signals have excluded the best parts of the SUSY spectrum. There is certainly a big conundrum here. Theorists may be sent back to the drawing board, but it is too early to say.

SUSY Models don't play out the same way that the Standard Model does, so a failure to find a Higgs boson has different implications for it than for the Standard Model. But, high mass exclusion ranges for the lighest supersymmetric particle coupled with the absence of a Higgs under the mass range where it has been excluded by direct searches, is a real problem for SUSY as well.

A blanket failure of SUSY models to fit the data has profound implications for the theoretical physics community because SUSY is a necessary (but not sufficient) component of string theory. If SUSY is ruled out, so is string theory. Woit, a long time SUSY critic, chronicles the disappointments that LHC is meting out to SUSY theorists.  As physics blogger Clifford Johnson puts it: "Wouldn’t it be interesting if both the Standard Model Higgs and the simplest models of Supersymmetry were ruled out? (I’m not saying that they are – it’s all to soon to tell – but it is a possible outcome.)"


My personal prediction at this point, admittedly by someone who is no more than an educated layman is that:

1. The Standard Model Higgs will be ruled out in the next six months to a year by LHC.

2. SUSY will effectively be ruled out in most of its permutations, dealing a deep blow to string theory. Other precision measurements over the next half decade or so will confirm that conclusion.

3. Strong indications of a fourth generation of fermions at high masses that have only a modest impact on the CKM matrix will be discovered. The fourth generation of fermions will result essentially all of the unexpected results in the Standard Model except for the missing Higgs boson.

4. Precision astronomy observations of low brightness objects and improved theoretical calculations using the exact equations of general relativity rather than a Newtonian approximation in the weak field for typical galactic and galactic cluster structures will greatly reduces the inferred proportion of dark matter in the universe, but will not eliminate it. Some effects previously attributed to dark matter or MOND will be found to flow from the non-Newtonian component of gravity in General Relativity.

5. A search for a stable, massive, electrically neutral, non-baryonic particle that does not interact through the strong force and perhaps not through the weak force either (along the line of a right handed neutrino) has a reasonable chance of success.

6. Low energy QCD will provide a much deeper understanding of the stong force, driven by computationally intensive latice method simulations that are ultimately confirmed by experiments.

7. In two to ten years, someone will come up with a satisfying alternative to the Higgs model for mass generation, probably drawing on work being done in loop quantum gravity and QCD today. It will not employ extra Klein-Kaluza dimensions, branes, or predict the existence of a multitude of new particles. While "walking technicolor" is probably the most viable Higgsless model out there today, I suspect that it will be ruled out in the next decade or sooner by LHC results and will not be the theory that resolves the Standard Model's missing Higgs problem.