Higgs Boson

OK.
I'll take the three days since this thread appeared from the thread title to clearly concern Creationism and Evolution in regard to the Higgs particle, usually quoted here and in the News as the God particle.I will not return here until Monday, in the name iof Justice, Free Sppeech, Fairness, and dang it,... plain English:THREAD TITLE/INVITATION:
"Creation/Evolution In The News Higgs Boson"

Thank you. And don't post in this thread when you return.

Could someone explain to me in layman's terms why these experiments only give a greater and greater probability of the Higgs boson existing? One doesn't have the same difficulty when detecting the existence of a giraffe.Thanks.

The data gathered consists of things happening at certain energy levels. But with the bazzillions of things happening there are lots and lots of dots on the graph showing results. There are random things going on. When a bump is seen in the graph (which can be interpreted as a particle) it could be that there just happened to be a pile up of random measurements at that point.In many studies the chance of something being there just by random chance is calculated and if the odds against it are at least 19 to 1 then it is called "significant" and the results are considered to be correct within a reasonable probability.However, in this case they don't begin to consider that there is a real signal there until he odds against it happening randomly are oodles of bunches to one. (Someone else can supply the actually number but it's more like millions to 1 instead of 19. ) OK I looked it up and they announce at about 3.5 million to one)As more and more data is gathered the odds the bump occurring if there is no higgs keeps getting higher. However, even 50 million to one isn't a zero chance so as is typical in the sciences they don't say "It IS the higgs." They say instead that "The chances of seeing this if there is no Higgs is 3.5 (or more) million to one".Of course, if they aren't writing in a science paper but just speaking as a normal, rational human being at some point you stop "waffling" and say "It's the damned Higgs!" Period. Odds of 3.5 million or more seem like a good place to bet a lot that it is the Higgs.I remember something from some announcement day press conference when reporters asked someone from one of the teams if they had found the Higgs he gave them both answers: one as a scientist and one just as a person.If we detected giraffes by shining 3 dim lights across the jungle at about 15 feet above the ground and 20 feet apart and measured the number of times all 3 were blocked in succession then we'd have the same problem. Tree branches sway, birds fly, dust blows and antelopes jump high as well as giraffes walking by.At some point we'd have so many cases of 3 dims in succession we might say the odds were it was an animal at least 15 feet tall. (There could be another animal out there that is also tall but not a giraffe and that is still considered in the Higgs case too but there are good reasons not to give it as much weight just like we don't in the giraffe case)

Well, I think the most obvious answer is that the Higgs boson's neck in not all that long.Besides, with a giraffe you look for, well, a giraffe. With the Higgs you can't see it, it decays too quickly, so you have to look for the debris created from a decaying Higgs.Besides, there are a number of different ways a Higgs can decay so there are a number of different patterns that could be produced.Besides, there are a number of other things that can present these same various decay patterns and the standard model tells us how often each type of thing will present what probability of what kind of pattern.So you look at all the trillions of collisions looking at all the decay patterns seeing so many of this with so many of that and what's not a Higgs over here and what might or might not be a Higgs over there subtracting out the probabilities of the not and the might not be Higgs leaving some percentage of the might be a Higgs kind of signals.Now nature (the actual dynamics of the proton-proton hits), equipment variances and all kids of other noise and uncertainty all conspire to produce error bars in the data. The good thing is, the more data you can collect the more these extraneous error things can be identified and corrected for leaving smaller error bars.So you have a whole bunch of data and all the math and the error bars telling you that the left over signatures after subtracting out all the other stuff gives an 80% chance that what is left is due to Higgs created signatures.Not good enough. 80% is like a "4 sigma." So collect more data and more data and analyze more data and more data until you reach 5 sigma which under the normal bell curve is sooo far out to the right tail end of the curve, about .999999 certainty, that there is virtually no possibility that the signals left belong to anything other than the Higgs.So now, and only now, can you say you found the Higgs.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

New CERN Research Details Evidence of the Direct Decay of the Higgs Boson to Fermions