My Corporate Masters have finally posted the piece that ran in the most recent print edition of the magazine, in which prominent physicists comment on the LHC. They’ve got predictions and explanations of why the LHC is interesting from an impressive array of people.
Most of the answers are pretty predictable. Lisa Randall talks about extra dimensions, Leonard Susskind about the Anthropic Principle, etc. My favorite answer, though, is Steven Weinberg’s:
What terrifies theorists is that the LHC may discover nothing beyond the single neutral “Higgs” particle that is required by the standard electroweak theory. With no sign of supersymmetry or technicolor or anything unexpected, we would then have no clue to what happens at the much higher energies where gravitation becomes a strong force. We fervently hope for some complicated discoveries.
I have to say, on a certain level, I’m actually rooting for the “nothing but the Higgs” scenario, just because I like to see theorists squirm.
Not sure that will change your mind but “nothing but Higgs”= “a lot of anthropic reasoning”, as the most plausible explanation of the hierarchy between the weak and Planck scales would become environmental selection.
I’m rooting for “no Higgs”.
For subtle reasons that do not fit in this comment box.