I got up early this morning, so I had a chance to study the results from LHC, namely the preliminary publications from the ATLAS and CMS detectors.
According to the ATLAS team, the likelihood that the event count they see around 126 GeV is due purely to chance is less than one in a million. The result is better than 5σ, which makes it almost certain that they observed something.
The CMS detector observed many possible types of Higgs decay events. When they combined them all, they found that the probability that all this is due purely to chance is again less than one in a million… in their case, an almost 5σ result. Once again, it indicates very strongly that something has been observed.
But is it the Higgs? I have to say it’s beginning to look like it’s both quacking and walking like a duck… but CERN is cautious, and rightfully so. Their statement is that “CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson”, and I think it is a very correct one.