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The question about the 170 GeV prediction is obsolete now.

But the issue:

to drive the Higgs mass to the lower bound, rather than to the upper bound, in an altered version of the noncommutative standard model

remains relevant and has been addressed indeed by an updated almost-commutative spectral extension of the standard model. This extension according to http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.8050 claims basically that:

[the] obstruction to lower [the Higgs mass] was overcome in http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.1030 simply by taking into account a scalar field which was already present in the full model which [was] computed previously in http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3980. One lesson which [was] learned on that occasion is that [one has] to take all the fields of the noncommutative spectral model seriously, without making assumptions not backed up by valid analysis, especially because of the almost uniqueness of the Standard Model in the noncommutative setting.

Incidently this new neutral singlet scalar field (σ) comes originally from some Majorana term in the spectral action responsible for a type I see-saw mechanism implying existence of heavy right-handed neutrinos (http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0610241). It is worth mentioning that this σ field can purpotedly stabilize the Higgs coupling and prevent it from becoming negative at higher energies thus make it consistent with its mass of 126 Gev, providing a vev for σ of the order of $10^{11}$ GeV compatible with the Majorana mass that could explain the actual neutrino phenomenology.

The question about the 170 GeV prediction is obsolete now.

But the issue:

to drive the Higgs mass to the lower bound, rather than to the upper bound, in an altered version of the noncommutative standard model

remains relevant and has been addressed indeed by an updated almost-commutative spectral extension of the standard model. This extension according to http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.8050 claims basically that:

[the] obstruction to lower [the Higgs mass] was overcome in http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.1030 simply by taking into account a scalar field which was already present in the full model which [was] computed previously in http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3980. One lesson which [was] learned on that occasion is that [one has] to take all the fields of the noncommutative spectral model seriously, without making assumptions not backed up by valid analysis, especially because of the almost uniqueness of the Standard Model in the noncommutative setting.

Incidently this new neutral singlet scalar field (σ) comes originally from some Majorana term in the spectral action responsible for a type I see-saw mechanism implying existence of heavy right-handed neutrinos (http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0610241). It is worth mentioning that this σ field can purpotedly stabilize the Higgs coupling and prevent it from becoming negative at higher energies thus make it consistent with its mass of 126 Gev, providing a vev for σ of the order of $10^{11}$ GeV compatible with the Majorana mass that could explain the actual neutrino phenomenology. This last choice of parameter can be interpreted as some fine-tuning ...

The question about the 170 GeV prediction is obsolete now.

But the issue:

to drive the Higgs mass to the lower bound, rather than to the upper bound, in an altered version of the noncommutative standard model

remains relevant and has been addressed indeed by an updated almost-commutative spectral extension of the standard model. This extension according to http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.8050 claims basically that:

[the] obstruction to lower [the Higgs mass] was overcome in http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.1030 simply by taking into account a scalar field which was already present in the full model which [was] computed previously in http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3980. One lesson which [was] learned on that occasion is that [one has] to take all the fields of the noncommutative spectral model seriously, without making assumptions not backed up by valid analysis, especially because of the almost uniqueness of the Standard Model in the noncommutative setting.

Incidently this new neutral singlet scalar field (σ) comes originally from some Majorana term in the spectral action responsible for a type I see-saw mechanism implying existence of heavy right-handed neutrinos. It is worth mentioning that this σ field can purpotedly stabilize the Higgs coupling and prevent it from becoming negative at higher energies thus make it consistent with its mass of 126 Gev, providing a vev for σ of the order of $10^{11}$ GeV. This last value fits with the actual neutrino phenomenology.

The question about the 170 GeV prediction is obsolete now.

But the issue:

to drive the Higgs mass to the lower bound, rather than to the upper bound, in an altered version of the noncommutative standard model

remains relevant and has been addressed indeed by an updated almost-commutative spectral extension of the standard model. This extension according to http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.8050 claims basically that:

[the] obstruction to lower [the Higgs mass] was overcome in http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.1030 simply by taking into account a scalar field which was already present in the full model which [was] computed previously in http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3980. One lesson which [was] learned on that occasion is that [one has] to take all the fields of the noncommutative spectral model seriously, without making assumptions not backed up by valid analysis, especially because of the almost uniqueness of the Standard Model in the noncommutative setting.

Incidently this new neutral singlet scalar field (σ) comes originally from some Majorana term in the spectral action responsible for a type I see-saw mechanism implying existence of heavy right-handed neutrinos (http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0610241). It is worth mentioning that this σ field can purpotedly stabilize the Higgs coupling and prevent it from becoming negative at higher energies thus make it consistent with its mass of 126 Gev, providing a vev for σ of the order of $10^{11}$ GeV compatible with the Majorana mass that could explain the actual neutrino phenomenology.

The question about the 170 GeV prediction is obsolete now.

But the issue:

to drive the Higgs mass to the lower bound, rather than to the upper bound, in an altered version of the noncommutative standard model

remains relevant and has been addressed indeed by an updated almost-commutative spectral extension of the standard model. See http://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.1030v2.pdf and http://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.8050v2.pdf

This extension claims basically that in addition to the Higgs scalar field, there exists a neutral singlet scalar field (σ), whose vev gives a Majorana mass of at least of the order of 10^11 Gev to right handed neutrinos. This new scalar field can stabilize the Higgs coupling and prevent it from becoming negative at higher energies thus make it consistent with the low Higgs mass of 126 Gev found by ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the LHC.

Incidently, thinking about the name one could give to the quantum of this new scalar field, the term Majoron shows up naively but quite intriguingly it can lead the curious reader to a specific yet simple gauge extension (3-3-1) of the Standard Model in the usual quantum field theory framework (no non-commutative geometry required ;-). Such an extension is claimed to have all the ingredients to provide the correct neutrino masses and strong candidates to cold dark matter (http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0307253). Last but not least a reduced minimal version of this model is purpotedly proved to be compatible to the LHC8 phenomenology and one of its salient feature, existence of a doubly charged scalar may be probed at the next run of LHC (http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.7246).

Comments about this last model from not only curious people but scrutinizing readers with more expertise than me are welcome!

The question about the 170 GeV prediction is obsolete now.

But the issue:

to drive the Higgs mass to the lower bound, rather than to the upper bound, in an altered version of the noncommutative standard model

remains relevant and has been addressed indeed by an updated almost-commutative spectral extension of the standard model. This extension according to http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.8050 claims basically that:

[the] obstruction to lower [the Higgs mass] was overcome in http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.1030 simply by taking into account a scalar field which was already present in the full model which [was] computed previously in http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3980. One lesson which [was] learned on that occasion is that [one has] to take all the fields of the noncommutative spectral model seriously, without making assumptions not backed up by valid analysis, especially because of the almost uniqueness of the Standard Model in the noncommutative setting.

Incidently this new neutral singlet scalar field (σ) comes originally from some Majorana term in the spectral action responsible for a type I see-saw mechanism implying existence of heavy right-handed neutrinos. It is worth mentioning that this σ field can purpotedly stabilize the Higgs coupling and prevent it from becoming negative at higher energies thus make it consistent with its mass of 126 Gev, providing a vev for σ of the order of $10^{11}$ GeV. This last value fits with the actual neutrino phenomenology.