New Subatomic Particle or Fluky Pattern?

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by Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Senior WriterDate: 07 April 2011 Time: 08:14 PM ET


The announcement this week that scientists may or may not have discovered a new subatomic particle has riled up the physics world. So how do we know for sure whether the particle is real or not?

A number of tests in the coming months should point the way:

1. Get more data

The signal comes from the Tevatron particle accelerator at the Fermilab physics laboratory in Batavia, Ill. Scientists noticed a bump in their data — an overabundance of a certain pattern that was not predicted, which could indicate the presence of a never-before-seen particle, scientists say.

The catch is, the pattern could represent a real physical phenomenon, or it could be a statistical anomaly. Scientists say there's a 1 in 1,000 chance the finding is just a fluke. To get a better idea of whether the signal is real, researchers need to sort through more data.

more

http://www.livescience.com/13631-subatomic-particle-physics.html

[WheelWalker]

1. The devil's in the data. nt