sweet!  so i'm just young enough to own my first hover car before i die!!

I have serious reservations about this announcement, and I find this disclosure highly irresponsible. There should be a preponderance of evidence for making this statement, because the people running the experiment are in no way at all impartial about the outcome. Much of the scientific community expects that this particle exists, wants this same particle to exist, and frankly needs this particle to exist. We all know too well that we often end up seeing things that we want to see.

My mind harkens back to the Martian meteorite debacle, and the Viking debacle that happened before that. Which was the result of overoptimism on the part of researchers. In both cases they saw something that they wanted to see in the data, and only later it was proven that the data could reflect something else entirely. With Viking basic chemical processes could produce the same results as life, and in the Martian meteorite it was shown that natural processes could fashion those structures.

Sure there is still some hedging in the description, but the problem is that the average layperson is going to make the logical leap, and that could lead to a public relations debacle later. When they may have to say it didn't end up being what they thought it was. More damning perhaps is they didn't need to make any announcement until much later. Their research cannot be independently verified or discredited. So there is no peer review that can be done. Anyway I think they should have waited until there was much more data beyond saying hey something is there it must be what I was looking for.

So what we're talking about is the possibility to turn energy into matter, and vice versa without chemical change?

It is 100% confirmed by any reasonable standard. I would normally agree with you but it's just not like that.

In fact the physicists are being too conservative. It's been independently confirmed to five sigma by two different experiments and three sigma by a third (Tevatron in the US), and has involved tens of teams independently analysing the dataset. There is no possibility for error like the experiments you mentioned. We have a new particle, and it's overwhemingly likely based on the kind of data that it's a Higgs. If it's not a Higgs that's even BIGGER news.

"Disclosure" had to happen soon anyway, ALL the CERN data is public and streamed to every university in Europe working on particle physics; if they hadn't announced a university would have done so within days.

The LHC already does this. It smashes two protons together so their kinetic energy is changed into a Higgs, then the Higgs turns into detectable energy as photons.

@theprof

I am sorry, but you are profoundly confused. I believe you are confusing chemical reactions that break chemical bonds to generate energy with Matter Energy conversion. They have nothing to do with one another. When you are burning gasoline, or oxidizing the hydrocarbon. Matter is not being turned into energy. Matter is just releasing energy that has been stored. The gallon of gasoline that went into the engine comes out the other end in byproducts such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and water vapor. The mass is still the same.

When your talking about matter energy conversion. Your typically talking about nuclear decay, virtual particles in Quantum Mechanics, or Matter Antimatter annihilation. There isn't any chemical change involved at all. Except that any matter created would naturally have properties. Anyway the Higgs field has nothing to do with all of that. It is just something that gives particles mass, and there isn't any evidence it could be manipulated to increase, or decrease mass, and even if it could. You still wouldn't be getting a free lunch. There is nothing here that violates the laws regarding the conservation of energy.

So since the Higgs boson gives particle mass, who or what gives the mass to the Higgs boson?

It doesn't give particles mass. It's existence is associated with the Higgs field that does. That field gives the Higgs boson mass as well.

@Soleron

I still think the onus should be on them providing the data. Rather then them interpreting the data. If you are the one running the experiment you shouldn't openly be a proponent of one theory or another. It is like a referee taking up sides in a game. There are multiple models out there, and saying this is that particle in this popular model opens them up to being wrong. They don't have to put themselves in a position where they could end up being wrong. The truth is anyone hearing this data could sum it up to the public without them putting themselves on the line.

"They" is actually many teams employed by CERN to specifically analyse the data. They're different from the people who designed or who are operating the experiment.

Their wording says that a Higgs boson is the most likely explanation. They can't be wrong.

And if it isn't a Higgs boson it was still worth making a big deal over. Your first post said they shouldn't have announced it, now you're saying they shouldn't interpret it? Any physicist would interpret the data the same: high chance of a Standard Model Higgs.