New LHC Results: We Were Sure We Found the Higgs Boson, and Now We're Even Surer
Big Smash: Atlas's eight giant superconducting magnets, together powerful enough to crush a bus CERNA nearly 6-sigma result says we are now surer than sure that the God particle is real Researchers at CERN and the world over were already sure they had found the Higgs Boson--five-sigma sure--but in case there were any lingering doubts a new round of results coming out of Geneva further backs the earlier findings. One team there now reports a 5.9 sigma level of certainty that the Higgs exists. That equates to a one-in-550 million chance that the results are incorrect reflections of statistical errors. The agreed-upon sigma level for a proper discovery is a 5-sigma result, which only requires a one-in-3.5 million chance of statistical fluke. That's what both the ATLAS and CMS teams were claiming back in July when the initial discovery was reported (technically CMS was reporting a result between 4.9 adn 5...