Higgs discovery rumour baseless

LONDON - Rumours of a discovery of the Higgs boson at Fermilab’s Tevatron collider are apparently unfounded.

Last week, blogger and physicist Tommaso Dorigo sparked speculation over an imminent announcement of a “three-sigma” signal of the elusive Higgs particle.

Three-sigma refers to the statistical certainty of the result-a 99.7 per cent likelihood that the measurement is accurate.

However, the errors and fluctuations in particle collisions are high enough that a five-sigma signal is necessary to claim a discovery.

At the International Workshop on the Interconnection between Particle Physics and Cosmology 2010 meeting in Turin, Italy, physicist Simona Rolli said that she and colleagues on Tevatron experiments doubted the basis of Dorigo’s rumour

They have not heard any talk about a Higgs signal.

Rolli has speculated that the rumour may have emerged from continued excitement over a three-sigma signal on a completely different finding- a clue about why the universe is composed of more matter rather than antimatter, initially announced in May.

Meanwhile, Fermilab’s Twitter feed has quashed the Higgs rumour in more blunt terms:

“Let’s settle this: the rumors spread by one fame-seeking blogger are just rumours. That’s it,” New Scientist quoted them as saying.

Of course, it is nonetheless still possible that a team at Tevatron could announce a Higgs discovery before rivals at the Large Hadron Collider.

Physicist Leon Lederman told the Daily Telegraph that he would have mixed feelings if the Tevatron were to beat the LHC to the discovery.

“It would be a little like your mother-in-law driving off a cliff in your BMW,” he said. (ANI)