I am not a physicist, only someone who enjoys physics, so
I may be. I would love to be enlightened if I did misunderstand.
My understanding from the statement is that they know there is the effects of a Higgs has been observed. But that this isn't necessarily the Higgs which fits into the Standard Model. I understand there are other models which may be considered but I thought that there were specific conditions which would satisfy the Standard Model.
>this isn't necessarily the Higgs which fits into the Standard Model
We know that the standard model is "wrong" -- it breaks down at high enough energies. But it's valid at lower energies; it works for the stuff we can actually observe. And it requires a Higgs field to make sense.
If they discover a particle that fills this role, that's discovering "the" Higgs. It doesn't matter if it turns out that the Higgs sector is more complicated; the fundamental prediction of the standard model has been vindicated. Even though everyone kind of expected this, its still a big deal!
So if a pop science article says that the Higgs has been discovered, they're not really being sensationalist in their wording. Working physicists would say the same thing.
(They might be a bit off in pointing to this particular announcement as the discovery, of course! The bbc seems to have the most sober coverage of this sort of thing: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21785205)
Thanks! From your explanation, I guess I may have misunderstood the significance of observing a Higgs versus the Higgs when it comes to semantics. Maybe it's a case of me just being too specific and I should cool my jets. However, the swath of results stating "god particle found" across the board, when searching for the source, felt a bit much.
The one we know for sure about is related to gravity -- you normally ignore it in particle physics, but there's a point where you can't do that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_scale
Now, it's quite likely interesting stuff happens before that point! (Such as the extra Higgs suggested by supersymmetry.) And there are also other, complicated reasons to suspect that the Standard Model breaks down, to suspect that it is really what we call an "effective field theory".
That's all ignoring issues like dark matter or the neutrino mass, which are not predicted by the standard model. But it's kind of interesting that the model (in a certain sense) naturally limits its own predictions.
My understanding from the statement is that they know there is the effects of a Higgs has been observed. But that this isn't necessarily the Higgs which fits into the Standard Model. I understand there are other models which may be considered but I thought that there were specific conditions which would satisfy the Standard Model.