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The same is true of every other boson, except arguably photons in the classical limit (e.g. you can put a multimeter on an antenna and detect them "non-probabal
by ajross 3y ago
The same is true of every other boson, except arguably photons in the classical limit (e.g. you can put a multimeter on an antenna and detect them "non-probabalistically"). The Higgs detection is sound. A quick check of wikipedia says 5.9 sigma. Good enough for me, anyway.
- bee_rider 3y ago> e.g. you can put a multimeter on an antenna and detect them "non-probabalistically" I think I get what you mean, but we should be clear—every measurement is probabilistic, right? We can measure photons with low enough inaccuracy that we don’t bother quantifying the probability that they might not exist. But, it is actually on some philosophical level a difference of degree, not type. I’m pretty sure.
- ducttapecrown 3y agoWhat does it mean for a measurement to be probabilistic? I'm a math grad student, so still a layman, but here's the way I think about it: Every particle travels over every possible path as the wave spreads out. Once you measure the particle, it tells you a path. So the measured value of the particle is probabilistic, not the measurement.
- dguest 3y agoI don't know where you get 5.9 sigma but that might have been the confidence at the time it was discovered in 2012. Since then the LHC took a lot more data and the confidence is more like 20 sigma. That said, these days it's harder to find a paper that gives a confidence for discovery, since they are all quoting the signal strength with respect to the standard model prediction. They generally measure this within about 5%, see for example https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.05498 https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.05498