Take a good look at this, and try to imagine whether you would pick that little bump out if someone hadn't drawn a line through it "to guide the eye". My experienced guess is that this is real, mostly because comparable signals have been seen in this place from three independent experiments now.
There are mysteries though. For example, the signal is about twice as large as what would be expected for the 'standard model' theoretical Higgs particle. If this holds up, it's roughly as big a problem as not seeing it at all...Time, and of course more data, will tell. Each of these experiments has already taken more than three times as much data as is analyzed here, so confirmation and follow-up won't take too long. There should be more news by the New Year.
Take a good look at this, and try to imagine whether you would pick that little bump out if someone hadn't drawn a line through it "to guide the eye". My experienced guess is that this is real, mostly because comparable signals have been seen in this place from three independent experiments now.
ReplyDeleteThere are mysteries though. For example, the signal is about twice as large as what would be expected for the 'standard model' theoretical Higgs particle. If this holds up, it's roughly as big a problem as not seeing it at all...Time, and of course more data, will tell. Each of these experiments has already taken more than three times as much data as is analyzed here, so confirmation and follow-up won't take too long. There should be more news by the New Year.