3.4 sigmas aren't enough. Call when you get to 5.
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/12/13/the-large...
and...
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/12/13/the-large...
and...
I think that the uncertainty about the model and assumptions is already larger than 1/1000, especially given the recent failed "faster-than-light neutrinos" LHC experiment. So while 5 sigmas would be nice, I would assume that the physicists over there are busy double-checking everything, and trying to reproduce the result, rather than improve their "sigma-score".
Can any physicist confirm? I'm not all that familiar with how these things work. Furthermore, if they perform once more the experiment and get the same 3-sigma result, wouldn't that compound into a >3-sigma total?
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/04/faster-tha...
It was a lot of media hype over a preprint of preliminary results that have never been confirmed.
As to the double-checking, the analysis behind this result used the whole data set collected by the BaBar experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC). So that's years of data, and the experiment hasn't been running since 2008. The question of course is, can some other experiment produce the same results. As this is B-physics I would guess LHCb, one of the 4 main experiments at CERN's LHC, might be able to do this, but I really don't know for sure.
If you can repeat the same experiment and get another 3 sigma deviation from the Standard Model predictions then yes, you could combine the results to get a >3 sigma total (though they don't simply just add up to 6).
Right:) That's exactly what I was referring to: the uncertainty about the model/experimental setup is larger than the N-sigmas uncertainty reported by the model and instruments.