# Higgs boson: so who'll get the Nobel? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 6, 2012, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higgs-boson-so-wholl-get-the-nobel/627367 "2012-07-06T00:11:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Esox\_Lucius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Esox\_Lucius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esox_Lucius)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higgs-boson-so-wholl-get-the-nobel/627367/21 "2012-07-06T08:16:54Z")
> [@MikeS](#): > > Another complicating factor is that while Higgs got his name attached to the boson, [three groups](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_mechanism#Discovery) (totaling six physicists) came up with the idea independently. Unfortunately, a Nobel Prize can’t be shared among more than three people/organizations, so some of them will be SOL. > [@Pasta](#): > > Regarding the thread topic at hand: no one has mentioned the experimental effort. The prediction of the Higgs wasn’t the biggest theoretical leap we’ve had in the past century, but the discovery of the Higgs was pretty friggin’ tough. Of course, the experimental effort has even more people to sift through looking for appropriate prize recipients… I learned today that there’s a team of 150 geeks at a supercomputing facility in Vancouver who process some of the data from CERN–about ten percent of it. There must be a small city’s worth of people involved with the Higgs boson project. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higgs-boson-so-wholl-get-the-nobel/627367/22 "2012-07-06T13:36:46Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > Perhaps, but what does it indicate or connote that “empirical” or “experimental” alone fail to? So what you are saying is that for all practical purposes the three words are indistinguishable ? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higgs-boson-so-wholl-get-the-nobel/627367/23 "2012-07-06T14:43:48Z")
> [@MikeS](#): > > Another complicating factor is that while Higgs got his name attached to the boson, [three groups](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_mechanism#Discovery) (totaling six physicists) came up with the idea independently. Unfortunately, a Nobel Prize can’t be shared among more than three people/organizations, so some of them will be SOL. It’s even more complicated than that – Philipp Gibbs has compiled [a nice rundown](http://blog.vixra.org/2012/05/17/3632/) of the development of what has become known as the Higgs mechanism. The bottom line is that (as you know) in modern physics, it’s rarely the sole genius that has a bulb lighting up above his head and writes down an idea, fully formed. But I think Higgs will at least get a part – I think that, while he may not be the sole architect of the mechanism of mass generation by symmetry breaking, at least he first explicitly pointed to the existence of a massive scalar in the spectrum (upon revising his paper after it had originally been rejected, reportedly for not proposing any experimentally observable effects – ah, those where the days, when that still was a criterion in theoretical physics), and that’s what’s been actually discovered. Plus, the damn thing’s got his name on it… ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2012, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higgs-boson-so-wholl-get-the-nobel/627367/24 "2012-07-07T01:35:56Z")
So Higgs might get part of it the same way Chauvin got a piece of the Chemistry Nobel back in 2005? Not so much for what he managed to do but for pointing others in the right direction (in this case, Schrock and Grubbs.) And I don’t mean that in any sort of disparaging way. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2012, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higgs-boson-so-wholl-get-the-nobel/627367/25 "2012-07-07T04:35:30Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > So what you are saying is that for all practical purposes the three words are indistinguishable ? 🙂 Empirical is actually wider than experimental. It includes both experiments (i.e., manipulating the world in some way to see what happens) and the collection of purely observational data where no experimental manipulation has taken place. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/higgs-boson-so-wholl-get-the-nobel/627367.md?page=1)