Strongest evidence yet of Higgs particle, still short of proof

BATAVIA, Ill | Mon Jul 2, 2012 10:25am EDT

BATAVIA, Ill (Reuters) - Physicists at Fermi National Accelerator Lab announced Monday that they had seen the strongest evidence yet of the subatomic "God particle" - more properly known as the Higgs boson - in the debris of collisions at the now-shuttered particle accelerator called the Tevatron.

The evidence still fell short of proof, however. Because the same debris hinting at the existence of the Higgs could also come from other subatomic particles, the physicists could rule out other explanations with a confidence of only 550-to-1; that is, there is less than a 0.2 percent chance that the collision debris is not from the Higgs. But by international convention, the odds have to be closer to 0.14 percent.

On Wednesday, physicists at CERN, the European particle accelerator located on the Swiss-French border, are scheduled to announce their own findings in the Higgs hunt.

(Reporting by Andrew Stern and Sharon Begley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Source: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/scienceNews/~3/Ilhuwv0yD2o/us-usa-higgs-idUSBRE8610RK20120702

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