Seminar Watch (Higgs Special), Rumoured Higgs at 125 GeV and What Would a Higgs at 125 GeV Tell Us?

Abstract

On the 12th December the CERN council will meet and announce the latest news about the search for the Higgs boson to its member states. In the meantime, a rumour that reached our comment section suggests that a signal for the Higgs boson has been seen at 125 GeV with 2-3 sigma significance. This would be a great result if confirmed because at this mass the standard model has problems with vacuum stability that are likely to require supersymmetry or something similar to stabilize.  The rumour may be wrong and even if it is right there may be other candidate signals to think about, and it will take much more data to verify that the signal is indeed correct for the Higgs, but if it is right, what then are the implications of the Higgs at this mass?