The LHC Finds a Tantalizing Hint of New Physics (bbc.com) 64
ytene writes: As reported by the BBC, a team at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are reporting a hint of new physics thanks to analysis of results from exploring the so-called beauty quark. Results from the LHCb are currently standing at three-sigma -- offering a roughly one-in-one-thousand chance that the measurements reported are a statistical coincidence, still considered short of the so-called "gold-standard" of five-sigma [in which there is a one in 3.5 million chance of the result being a fluke]. If further analysis and experiments confirm these results, they might point the way to an as-yet undiscovered particle, hints of something beyond the Standard Model.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually I think the media summary here is perfectly balanced between the interesting possibility of it and the likelihood of the result being wrong.
Certainly they're doing a better job than they did with the Venus phosphine life story.
Re:1 in a 1000 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:1 in a 1000 (Score:5, Informative)
CERN is not a neutrino discovery tool, never was, never will be. The instruments needed for neutrino detection are a completely different design.
Please provide references for your other statements, otherwise I fear they are just opinion...
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, indeed.
Younger generations are taking over and we get on slashdot the same thing as on Reddit: the suppression of anything hurting our "precious fweelings."
Any discourse, even argumented and providing links to supportive documents, will be downmodded to hell if it goes against the feelings of people.
Keeping an open mind and evaluating arguments and new points of view to enrich oneself is not a practised art by them.
Just obliterate anything that doesn't give good feelings.
Sigh.
Re:1 in a 1000 (Score:5, Informative)
CERN is the organization, the LHC is one of the instruments they run. The LHC is not a neutrino discovery tool.
Re: (Score:3)
There is still no independent confirmation of any of their "major discoveries" like the "Higgs boson"
I mean... are you going to build a second LHC? That should be done in a weekend and cost what $10 right?
Re:1 in a 1000 (Score:5, Informative)
No, there's a 1/1000 chance that this is a fluke. It's 99.9% likely to be real. In effect, they did 1000 experiments, and 999 showed the result.
Re: 1 in a 1000 (Score:1)
Re:1 in a 1000 (Score:5, Informative)
No, there's a 1/1000 chance that this is a fluke. It's 99.9% likely to be real. In effect, they did 1000 experiments, and 999 showed the result.
No, that is explicitly not how it works [wikipedia.org]. How it does work is a bit technical, but you can simplify it this way: if you ran an infinite number of experiments and the null hypothesis was true (i.e. there was no new physics), you would expect results this extreme in only 1 out of every 1,000 experiments. If you only ran 1000 experiments, you might see 1 result like this, or 10, or none. It doesn't mean it is 99.9% likely to be true: the LHC runs a lot of experiments (I wouldn't be surprised if they literally have over 1000 different analysis for different new physics), so you can easily end up with some of them producing results with this level of certainty purely by chance.
Re: (Score:2)
Complete sidenote, I can't help but feel like that Wikipedia entry is written by someone trying to sell their own book:
"see Chapter 10 of "All of Statistics: A Concise Course in Statistical Inference", Springer; 1st Corrected ed. 20 edition, September 17, 2004; Larry Wasserman"
That's explicitly *not* how citations on Wikipedia work.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
No, it's the opposite way around, and it even tells you that if you bother to read the summary properly.
ONE IN A THOUSAND CHANCE THEYRE WRONG.
Not one in a thousand chance they're right as you're basically claiming.
Re: (Score:2)
The actual words are: "a roughly one-in-one-thousand chance that the measurements reported are a statistical coincidence"
Re:1 in a 1000 (Score:4, Interesting)
If I roll a six-sided die six times, and I see one six, that is expected.
If I roll a six-sided die six times, and I see six sixes, that is unexpected. This is more like the 3-sigma bar being described here.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: 1 in a 1000 (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So they run a thousand experiments and got a "one in a thousand" result? Do I have that correct?
No.
Re: (Score:3)
To be fair: There is a one in a thousand chance that you are correct.
All in a name (Score:4)
'Beauty' Quark sounds so much better than 'Bottom'.
Bottom is its proper name. No one calls it beauty. But I guess that doesn't make as catchy a news headline.
Re: (Score:3)
What,! it's all about the bass [youtube.com].
Re:All in a name (Score:5, Insightful)
"Beauty" and "Truth" were the original names though, not "bottom" and "top".
Re: All in a name (Score:3)
Much better name. This article would imply a degree of sadism in the beauty quark, and one should never top from the bottom.
Re: (Score:2)
Clearly you've never heard the term "power bottom."
Re: (Score:2)
Frank: What's a power-bottom?
Mac: A power-bottom is a bottom that is capable of receiving an enormous amount of power.
Dennis: Actually Mac, you got it backwards. See, a power-bottom's actually generating all the power by doing most of the work.
Frank: Does the power have to do with the size or the strength of the bottom?
Mac: Now Dennis, I've heard that speed has something to do with it.
Dennis: Speed has everything to do with it. You see, the speed of the bottom informs the top how much pressure he's supposed
Re: (Score:2)
It's Always Sunny is just one long fun fest. Love that show.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly my first thought. (Score:3)
Re: All in a name (Score:2)
Re:All in a name (Score:5, Funny)
Bottom is its proper name. No one calls it beauty.
When I see a good bottom, I call it beauty.
Re:All in a name (Score:5, Funny)
When I see a good bottom, I call it beauty.
Can't we just split the difference and called it 'Booty' Quark?
Re: (Score:1)
When will they name a HBP: "Horny Bastard Particle"? It's a heavy bonder.
Re: (Score:2)
But I guess that doesn't make as catchy a news headline.
I don't know, I see the names Bottom and Top make quite catchy headlines all the time in BDSM Monthly.
Maybe also be sign of an error (Score:2)
Re:Maybe also be sign of an error (Score:5, Informative)
The article I read about this the other day said that there are two or three different experiments pointing in the same direction; if I understood correctly, the 3 sigma confidence is based on combining their results.
Re: (Score:2)
Does the superluminal neutrino experiment they had a few years back agree?
Another one. (Score:2)
Angry DBZA Vegeta voice: "Do I hear THIRTY-SEVEN?"
p-value (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
"a roughly one-in-one-thousand chance that the measurements reported are a statistical coincidence"
If you're going to make a pedantic criticism, you should at least read the summary. I don't expect they did it on purpose, but it doesn't claim a one in a thousand chance a new force exists.
Re: (Score:2)
It means that if they performed 1000 experiments similar to this, they would have gotten a result like this approximately once just by chance.
How many experiments on various topics have been performed with the LHC since it opened? More than 1000, I would guess.
So I am skeptical.
Obligatory XKCD [xkcd.com]
Re:That's good (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Depending on what "this discovery" is, it might well do so. Currently there's no reason to think that any collider we could conceivably build would turn up new physics. If it turns out this really is a new fundamental interaction, studying those is one of the primary reasons we've built accelerators in the past. That's the headline reason for the LHC after all.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, any experimenter is always planning for the next one. If you're not, you're done. This is true in any field, not just particle physics.
So: if we automatically didn't trust any given result because the researchers had plans for the next big thing, you'd never trust any result from anything.
Re: (Score:1)
how about China building one for justification: https://sciencebusiness.net/ne... [sciencebusiness.net]
Re: (Score:2)
You deliberately called the bottom quark "beauty quark", which nobody does, to trick us into believing it would be a *new* particle, and bait us with it. I bet you added "also called beauty quark" to the Wikipedia page yourself, because I've never seen it before, not on Wikipedia, not in any other quantum physics thing I've ever read or watched.
"also known as the beauty quark" [wikipedia.org] was added eleven years ago, so definitely playing the long game there...
Wait and see is still the best approach (Score:2)
truth (Score:2)
Truth decays into beauty, while beauty soon becomes merely charm. Charm ends up as strangeness, and even that doesn't last, but up and down are forever.