Five sigma is the standard of proof in Physics. The probability of a background fluctuation is a p-value of something like 0.0000006.

The really silly thing about the dust-up with AMS is that the PAMELA experiment (later confirmed by Fermi) made the exact same measurement and is credited with the discovery. AMS just re-did it with smaller error bars. Here's the original PAMELA paper from 2009: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7238/full/nature07942.html (preprint here: http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.4995 ) The dark matter interpretation isn't even new. All AMS has brought is smaller error bars.

It takes in hydrocarbons and oxygen and puts out energy? Am I a skeptic for thinking that this thing must be releasing lots of CO2? I cannot find any description of how it works. I have no doubt that it produces energy, but if it is producing gaseous CO2, it won't really help with the fundamental problem.

In the case of publicly-funded research, I'd first like to compel scientists to publish their work in a free-to-read format. Many journals do not make the articles available to the public. It seems a little wrong that public money goes to pay for research and then the results of the research -- the journal articles -- aren't available to the public.

When doing some physics (like quantum field theory) it is useful to adopt unit conventions where c=1. Using this convention, space and time would have same dimension. How long a time is 12 parsecs? It's the amount of time it takes light to travel 12 parsecs. In this unit system, speeds are dimensionless which might explain: "She'll make .5 past light speed."