The discovery of the Higgs boson, which “completes the standard model [of particle physics]” according to New Scientist, has passed peer review. Two papers, from the two experiments which each contributed to the discovery, have been published in Volume 716, Issue 1 (17 September 2012) of Physics Letters B, the same journal as Peter Higgs’ original paper which proposed the existence of a “mass-giving boson”. Despite declaring the standard model complete, the New Scientist piece says it is “lacking” and welcomes “the hunt for new physics”. Both papers are “Universally Available” at Science Direct (links below).
Source: Higgs boson gets peer-review seal of approval (New Scientist).
Papers:
Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC (ATLAS Collaboration, 2012, Physics Letters B, 1-29);
Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC (CMS Collaboration, 2012, Physics Letters B, 30-61).
(Apart from this being physics, not maths) I have a few comments:
– passing peer review doesn’t mean much. I bet lots more people were involved in checking the numbers before that big press conference than checked the paper. Peer review is not science and science is not peer review.
– God I hate ScienceDirect.
– That is an enormous list of co-authors!