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Posts tagged with Peter Higgs




Why the scientists aren’t combining data from two experiments to get 5-sigma evidence (= “proof”) for the Higgs boson The Higgs field was postulated nearly 50 years ago, the LHC was proposed about 30 years ago, the experiments have been in design and development for about 20 years, and we’ve been taking data for about 18 months. Rushing to get a result a few weeks early [would be dumb]. The reason we have two experiments at the LHC looking for the Higgs boson is because if one experiment makes a discovery then the other experiment can confirm or refute the discovery. This is why we have both D0 and CDF, both Belle and BaBar, both ATLAS and CMS, both UA2 and UA1

Why the scientists aren’t combining data from two experiments to get 5-sigma evidence (= “proof”) for the Higgs boson

The Higgs field was postulated nearly 50 years ago, the LHC was proposed about 30 years ago, the experiments have been in design and development for about 20 years, and we’ve been taking data for about 18 months. Rushing to get a result a few weeks early [would be dumb].

The reason we have two experiments at the LHC looking for the Higgs boson is because if one experiment makes a discovery then the other experiment can confirm or refute the discovery. This is why we have both D0 and CDF, both Belle and BaBar, both ATLAS and CMS, both UA2 and UA1


hi-res




Today’s Higgs Results

davidaedwards:

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=4282

The discussion after the talks is going on at CERN now, and the results that were presented agree well with what was posted here over the past week or so. This looks a lot like a Higgs near 125 GeV. Hiccups in the streaming make it difficult to impossible to follow the discussion. Caught Heuer at the end urging caution: “intriguing hints”. This looks to me like a lot more than “intriguing hints”: it’s about what you would expect if a Higgs was there at 125 GeV, highly unlikely to see if there is no Higgs there.