CERN: 'Don't believe the Higgs-Boson hype'

CERN is pouring cold water on the rumor it's gonna announce the discovery of the Higgs at today's seminar in Zurich. For the uninitiated: the Higgs-Boson is the particle that is believed to give all things mass: it surrounds us, penetrates us and binds the galaxy together. The scuttlebutt is that the ATLAS sensor picked up a Higgs with a mass of 125GeV (gigaelectronvolts) and rated at three-point-five-sigma -- a one sigma barely warrants a mention, a five-sigma is a bona-fide scientific discovery. CERN hasn't confirmed or denied anything, claiming it's still got five inverse femtobarns worth of data (roughly 5 x 70 x 10^12 of individual collisions) to examine before it can be sure, so just chuck the one bottle of champagne into the refrigerator -- better to be safe, eh?

CERN: 'Don't believe the Higgs-Boson hype' originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/13/cern-dont-believe-the-higgs-boson-hype/

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