LHC Research May Help Explain the Universe's Matter/Antimatter Imbalance 113
suraj.sun sends this excerpt from the BBC:
"Particles called D-mesons seem to decay slightly differently from their antiparticles, LHCb physicist Matthew Charles told the HCP 2011 meeting on Monday. The result may help explain why we see so much more matter than antimatter. The team stresses that further analysis will be needed to shore up the result. At the moment, they are claiming a statistical certainty of '3.5 sigma' — suggesting that there is less than a 0.05% chance that the result they see is down to chance. The team has nearly double the amount of data that they have analyzed so far, so time will tell whether the result reaches the 'five-sigma' level that qualifies it for a formal discovery."
How do we know matter is more common? (Score:2, Insightful)
A star made of antimatter would look exactly the same as one made of matter, wouldn't it? What if half of what we can see in the universe is antimatter?
Re:What are the odds? (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>>At the moment, they are claiming a statistical certainty of '3.5 sigma' Ã" suggesting that there is less than a 0.05% chance that the result they see is down to chance.
>>Seems legit. I mean how many times would one need to take the chance of the results being down to chance for that chance having a chance of happening?
My plan for runs on the LHC is to run 1000 experiments and then pick the result that most supports some media-attention-grabbing theory that I'll just make up on the spot. /sacrasm off
In all honestly, a sigma of 0.05 isn't especially good for experiments like this. You don't have the confounding effects that make social "science" so hard to trust.