Current Status of Higgs Boson

♤ A promising sign is that a modest significant excess of elementary particles has been found in the data from the latest experiments at LHC. One of the experiments performed on the detector known as ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus)* suggests that Higgs boson could have a mass in the range of 116 to 130 GeV, with other masses excluded at 95% confidence level. The other experiment performed on the detector known as CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid)* pegged the particle’s mass at 115 to 127 GeV with 95% certainty.

♤ When evaluating results in particle physics, the scale of certainty used by researchers is the sigma scale. Researchers actually need a five-sigma level of certainty to make a bona-fide formal discovery, which means there is only a one in a million chance that the result is a statistical error.