Quote:
Originally Posted by T@T
Hope they find something...$5 billion is a lot of dough for a white elephant.
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Well I wouldn't call confirming the Standard Model a white elephant, and there's a ton of other science that can be done in the LHC other than finding the Higgs.
It would also put a lot of parameters on other theories trying to unify GR with the quantum world, limiting possible solutions and such, so even if it does no more than find the Higgs it helps in that regard. Think of doing an experiment where you're trying to figure out the mass of something, some things you could do would give you maybe a minimum mass, or a maximum mass, so you know the answer falls within a specific range, that's what even a successful Higgs find would do for theoretical physics.
The most interesting result would be to NOT find the Higgs, or to find something different that would crack the whole thing wide open, and give a clue as to where to go to unify gravity and the quantum world.