News Stories of Possible Imminent Higgs Boson Discovery

[sanman]

There seem to be a number of news stories coming out about the possibility of an imminent find of the Higgs Boson @ 125-126GeV:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16074411

So what if the elusive Higgs Boson is finally found? Could this somehow enable us to conquer and manipulate inertia? Would the Higgs field even be relatable to gravity, due to the Equivalence Principle?

I've read about future muon-colliders under development which could become "Higgs factories". If one could create sufficiently prodigious Higgs factories, then could this enable manipulation or generation of Higgs fields for some useful purpose - perhaps like propulsion? What are the practical applications of this exotic discovery? Could we directly get something practical out of Higgs particles and how to generate them?

 

[kurros]

For the foreseeable future there will be zero practical benefits to knowing about the Higgs boson. Perhaps in another hundred years there might be something, who knows. Regardless, it will be very handy for understanding fundamental physics, and there are great indirect economic benefits the world will receive for training and employing particle physicists, and of course the technology developed for the LHC contributes to other areas.

Anyway, they won't be announcing any discoveries, there hasn't been enough time to build up a signal with high statistical significance, but there could be some semi-convincing hints that something is going on. Actually, reading the article you linked, I see that John Ellis says as much in it.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Please reread the PF Rules again, everyone. We do not discuss unpublished results and rumors here.