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back to article Higgs boson chasers: Now only 1-in-300 MILLION chance we're wrong

CERN boffins are growing in confidence that the particle they spotted in the latest data from their Large Hadron Collider is indeed a Higgs boson. The Atlas experiment team has upped its level of certainty for Higgs-ness in a paper [PDF] for Physics Letters B, putting the sigma level at 5.9, which translates into a one-in-300- …

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    1. Toastan Buttar
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      Re: Collapsing reality

      Of course Monty had to open a 'bad door' (with a goat behind it). If he opened the door with the prize behind it, the game would be over and you'd have no option to switch.

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    2. Charles 9
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      Re: Collapsing reality

      It works like this. In your initial blind choice, your odds are 2:1 against you (two zonks, one prize). No matter which curtain you pick, Monty opens one of the bad ones (you are statistically certain to miss one bad curtain). Here's the rub. If you stick with your original pick, you're sticking with your 2:1 odds of missing, whereas by switching, you essentially ABANDON your original choice and make a NEW choice: this time one that's even money and better odds. Just for grins (I was in college in the time), I had my TI-92 run through a simulation of whole bunch of the scenarios just to see. The simulations bear out the research: keeping is 2:1 odds, switching is even money. You are better off switching.

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  2. Sam Therapy
    Happy

    So what are the chances...

    Of being killed by a shark that has the same birthday as you when there's a goat behind the door?

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  3. JosephU

    "explain how we and everything around us ... exists"?

    The second last sentence says:

    "And as physicist Paris Sphicas told The Register last month, just deciding that this is a Higgs boson isn't the end of the search: scientists are eager to learn how it fits into our universe and whether theories of supersymmetry or extra dimensions are necessary to explain how we and everything around us simply exists."

    Q. "explain how we and everything around us ... exists"?

    A. i.) Genesis 1:1 (NIV1984Bible)

    "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ..."

    ii.) Psalm 33:6 (NIV1984Bible)

    "By the word of the LORD the heavens were

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  4. Chelle12
    Pirate

    Proof a NEW Aether

    125 years after the 'Michelson–Morley experiment' there is finally proof that there IS an Aether, although not 'luminiferous'.

    This NEW Aether field that gives mass to particles (Higgs-mechanism), could also be what's generating the *effects* of Dark Matter, and Dark Energy which is considered to be a fluid that permeates throughout all of space with a positive energy density and a negative, outward-pushing pressure. Arrr, now it's time to unify it all!

    Einstein already spoke of a 'resurrected' Aether shortly after presenting GR:

    “Thus, once again ,,empty” space appears as endowed with physical properties, i.e., no longer as physically empty, as seemed to be the case according to Special Relativity. One can thus say that the Aether is resurrected in the General theory of Relativity, though in a more sublimated form.”

    A. Einstein, Grundgedanken und Methoden der Relativitatstheorie in ihrer Entwicklung dargestellt, (Morgan Manuscript) Einstein Archives 2070.

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  5. djnapkin

    One Christmas I posed this question to my pals: what is the chance of picking yourself (or someone picking themselves) in a Secret Santa draw? Our jape was that we would then plant a fancy prize e.g. an Xbox instead of the usual gift.

    One friend worked it out that night, on the train home. She was, and is, very bright. Gorgeous too. It's something like 1 over e.

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