Science! It Marches On

The news from Geneva this morning is in. Essentials: what we're seeing is pretty consistent with the existence of a Higgs boson around 123-126 GeV. The data aren't nearly conclusive enough to say that it's definitely there. But the LHC is purring along, and a year from now we'll know a lot more. It's like rushing to the tree on Christmas morning, ripping open a giant box, and finding a small note that says "Santa is on his way! Hang in there!" The LHC is real and Santa is not, but you know what I mean. Here are the technical write-ups from ATLAS and CMS. For stories and some live-blogs, check out Philip Gibbs, Matt Strassler, Aidan Randle-Conde, Ken Bloom, or Jester. Or if you just want the bottom line sigmas, Jim Rohlf provides them. ATLAS gives 3.6 sigma local significance, 2.3 sigma global significance; CMS gives 2.6 sigma local ...