Higgs results leaked – but are they real or rumour?

Lisa Grossman, reporter

Details are leaking out about the highly anticipated Higgs results from CERN. A story on Nature's website claims that two anonymous sources at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland say both of the Higgs-hunting experiments see signals of a Higgs-like particle around 125 gigaelectronvolts.

So is this really it? The reports are cautious. The convention in particle physics is to hold off on claiming a "discovery" until the statistical significance of the signal is five sigma, meaning the chance of producing a particular signal without a new particle is less than one in a million.

Nature claims the signals are between 4.5 and 5 sigma. A similar report in The Guardian says the results will be at the 4 sigma level, which the newspaper calls a "definite maybe".

CERN, for its part, is giving nothing away.

"The ATLAS and CMS analyses are still underway, and until Fabiola Gianotti and Joe Incandela deliver their talks on Wednesday, anything people might have said to Nature is premature," CERN press officer James Gillies told New Scientist. Because the analyses won't be complete until Tuesday, it's possible that even if the leaked rumours are true to the best of current knowledge, it could change before the official announcement on Wednesday.

We have our fingers crossed. New Scientist will be at CERN on Wednesday, and you can follow our live coverage as it unfolds.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/20f52adb/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cshortsharpscience0C20A120C0A70Chiggs0Eresults0Eleaked0Ebut0Eare0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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