Rumours about the Higgs-boson.

[trekkiedane]

Today I read two articles about rumours concerning discovery of the Higgs-boson.

Apparently something has leaked before the conference in Australia in a couple of weeks.

Remember that from last year’s data the local significance with diphotons was 3.1 sigma for CMS and 2.9 sigma for ATLAS. According to the mew rumour the total significance has risen to about 4 sigmas in both cases. This is not yet sufficient to claim a discovery for each experiment independently but the two results together could easily take the combined significance over the 5 sigma line that is required for discovery.

linky
(Five sigma equals a certainty of 99.9999%))​

Anyone here have more fun from the rumour-mill?

 

[thestrangequark]

This is the first I've heard, but it would be really fucking cool if this turns out to be true!

 

[trekkiedane]

Could be they're just trying to up the ante for ICHEP though...

 

[thestrangequark]

^Pfft. Like a physics conference needs hypin...oh...yeah.

 

[Leviathan]

...even if it's 5 Sigma:

Note that this would be the discovery of something consistent with a standard model Higgs boson. More work would be required to show that it has all the characteristics of the particle they were searching for.

Dammit.

...another year then before I can change my email sig to "Does my hadron excite your bosons?"

 

[trekkiedane]

^

 

[sojourner]

talk to me when they reach the application stage. Then it'll be cool.

 

[trekkiedane]

^SO frakking cool - I'd say


I'm kinda wondering what's wrong with Misc. today... Apart from a bit of science talk I had expected a thread with a title like this to gather a few posts with comments like: "I heard it was charmed by a top" or "Maybe it was attracted by a gluon"...

 

[Captain_Nick]

All well and good but until we can create a narrow bandwidth polaron field, there's no point getting excited.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I'm kinda wondering what's wrong with Misc. today... Apart from a bit of science talk I had expected a thread with a title like this to gather a few posts with comments like: "I heard it was charmed by a top" or "Maybe it was attracted by a gluon"...

Yeah, conversation seems to have bottomed out. Very strange.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I've think it's been quite some time since they've discovered the Higgs – or at least some particle – with enough probability for a regular person to say that it exists. I skimmed some reports from the experiments at least a month ago, if not more. It's not enough for science (and for good reason), but one can be pretty certain that the Higgs exists at this point. Then again, I could have said that even before they started looking, because it would have been a huge surprise if it didn't and the Standard Model was wrong.

There's still some tiny chance for excitement though. I'm still hoping that they won't find it, no matter how unlikely it has become. That would be fun.

 

[trekkiedane]

/.../ comments like: "I heard it was charmed by a top" or "Maybe it was attracted by a gluon"...

Yeah, conversation seems to have bottomed out. Very strange.

There's still some tiny chance for excitement though. I'm still hoping that they won't find it, no matter how unlikely it has become. That would be fun.

You know... I've been there and yes, you're absolutely right! that would be so cool

 

[thestrangequark]

I'm kinda wondering what's wrong with Misc. today... Apart from a bit of science talk I had expected a thread with a title like this to gather a few posts with comments like: "I heard it was charmed by a top" or "Maybe it was attracted by a gluon"...

Yeah, conversation seems to have bottomed out. Very strange.

Well, Misc has always had its ups and downs.

 

[Hound of UIster]

There is some stuff about it on Woit's blog.

 

[trekkiedane]

There is some stuff about it on Woit's blog.

Love it! It's nothing but rumours abut rumours

 

[trekkiedane]

There is some stuff about it on Woit's blog.

(thanks for playing tsq)