Physicists' Nightmare Scenario: The Higgs and Nothing Else

摘要

Suppose you are a particle physicist. A score of nations has given you several billion Swiss francs to build a machine that will probe the origins of mass, that ineffable something that keeps an object in steady motion unless shoved by a force. Your proposed explanation of mass requires a new particle, cryptically dubbed the Higgs boson, that your machine aims to espy. When, after 2 decades of preparation, you get ready to switch on your rig, you would fear nothing more than the possibility that you were wrong and the particle doesn't exist, right? Not exactly.