> On the other hand, not finding the Higgs would be an extremely exciting result, since it would open the way to less well-explored ideas about the origin of mass. The goal of the LHC is to teach us about the world, not stroke physicists' egos and tell us how clever our existing theories are.
Maybe the Higgs boson is the new aether[1] which, after many experiments failing at observing its existence, was replaced by relativity and quantum physics. By which I concur that an experiment built for, yet failing to demonstrate a point is not necessarily a failed experiment.
So whatever the results of the LHC, I'm confident that it's a worthwhile task to undertake.
There is a big difference. The experiments showed that the ether didn’t exist. But there is no experiment that shows that there is no Higgs boson. IIRC the expected roadmap is to find the Higgs boson in 3-5 years (from now) in the LHC, so don’t expect to see it sooner. (It is expected to see it in sooner in 2-3 years in the Tevatron, if it were kept open.)
The experiments show that if the Higgs boson exists, it is not very heavy (not heavier than 145GeV). And there is some indirect and inconclusive evidence that it exist and the real mass is near ~120GeV (probably +-10GeV), but it can be a statistical fluke, so we have to wait a few years.
Maybe the Higgs boson is the new aether[1] which, after many experiments failing at observing its existence, was replaced by relativity and quantum physics. By which I concur that an experiment built for, yet failing to demonstrate a point is not necessarily a failed experiment.
So whatever the results of the LHC, I'm confident that it's a worthwhile task to undertake.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether