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Higgs Signal Gains Strength

Posted by Soulskill on from the higgs-hulking-out dept.

ananyo writes "Today the two main experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, submitted the results of their latest analyses. The new papers (here here and here) boost the case for December's announcement of a possible Higgs signal. Physicists working on the In the case of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment, have been able to look at another possible kind of Higgs decay, and that allows them to boost their Higgs signal from 2.5 sigma to 3.1 sigma. Taken together with data from the other detector, ATLAS, Higgs' overall signal now unofficially stands at about 4.3 sigma."

5 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. Damn... by zero.kalvin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Personally I wish if the higgs didn't exist, it would make things exciting ( from a scientific point of view). But if it doesn't, it would be a huge setback for particle physicist.

  2. Eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I left my statistics degree in my other pants... is 4.3 sigma a good thing? How many sigmas is "certainty"?

  3. Let's not get too excited about 4.3sigma by slew · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Apparently, the superbowl coin toss "experiment" has generated nearly as large a statistical anomaly... http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/02/04/a-3-8-sigma-anomaly/

    Right now they are sorting through the math on old experimental data.

    I'm sure they are waiting for at least 6 sigma to acutally claim anything...

  4. Only the first step by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is only the first step. What the data suggests is that there's probably a particle there -- however, the higgs has several important properties that are impossible to measure with this dataset yet -- like its spin0 property. Chances are though, that because of how this data fits in with the higgs predicted mass, it really is the higgs.

  5. Re:Net economic loss? by rubycodez · · Score: 5, Interesting

    positron emissions have medical application http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron_emission_tomography

    strangely enough, application using one particle, the anti-neutrino, is in the works for reactor monitoring.

    muons might be used to catalyze fusion or reduce lifespan of nuclear waste (with fusion products of catalyzed reaction

    you are foolish, how can we engineer with the universe's components if we don't learn all we can about them?