For those of you like me who have been following the LHC since it turned on in 2008, hoping for it to deliver with something ground-breaking might just be done waiting.
It was announced on Friday evening a blip was found in recent data. Detected by both CMS and ATLAS, this blip occured around 120-140 GeV (gigaelectronvolts). This indicates an unusually high occurrence of W boson pairs, the weak nuclear force carriers. Similar patterns were found for corresponding photons and Z bosons.
This is exciting because these particles could be due to the decay of Higgs particles of masses around 120-140 GeV, and if this is verified then the evidence for the Higgs field (our best theory as to why things have mass) would be stronger.
Of course we can't get ahead of ourselves. The scientists at CERN still head to look into this more thoroughly. Back in April it was thought Higgs evidence was found too and it turned out to be a false alarm.
Personally, I'm hopeful. Unlike the last blip this one was announced by CERN, not leaked. I think this indicates the professionals are considering backing this. It'd be really cool to have Higgs evidence by the end of the summer.
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