Free Republic

Scientists’ hopes that last summer’s triumphant trapping of the particle that shaped the post-Big Bang universe would quickly open the way into exotic new realms of physics like string theory and new dimensions have faded this past week. Five days of presentations on the particle, the Higgs boson, at a scientific conference high in the Italian Alps point to it being the last missing piece in a 30-year-old cosmic blueprint and nothing more, physicists following the event say. “The chances are getting slimmer and slimmer that we are going to see something else exciting anytime soon,” said physicist Pauline Gagnon...

Has the Higgs boson finally been detected? It's almost gotten to the point that if a discovery of some sort doesn't come out of next week's update on the multibillion-dollar subatomic search, it'll be a big surprise. But how far will the announcement go, and what will it mean for the future of physics? To refresh your memory, the Higgs boson is the only fundamental subatomic particle predicted by theory but not yet detected. It's thought to play a role in endowing some particles, such as the W and Z boson, with mass ... while leaving other particles, such as...