chance in a million

Although Kermit wrote to his father, “I didn’t think I had a chance in a million nor did anyone else,” he brushed off the incident, writing that it was “the chances of the game.”

If we live in a universe predicated on randomness and luck, Maria Konnikova writes in her fascinating new book, “The Biggest Bluff,” then on a planet of 7.5 billion people, the idea of “one chance in a million” isn’t so unusual.

Members of Dr. Aprile’s team conceded that the best explanation they had right now — that axions were to blame — has two chances in 10,000 of being a fluke, a far cry from the “5-sigma” criterion of less than one chance in a million needed in particle physics to certify a “discovery.”

First, because there was not one chance in a million that it could actually help, and second, because plasma screens grow extremely hot after prolonged use.

Researchers know that both because of the particles they decayed into, and because no other standard model particle would even have a fragment of a chance in a million of making it through the Earth.