Now for the science bit…

Quantum field theorist Professor Matt Strassler, whom I mentioned previously and who’s been spending a few days at the Perimeter Institute, takes issue with the science in this BBC science report of “hints” of dark matter in his latest post. Meanwhile, a bit more insight into the CRESST dark matter situation (see yesterday’s post). There  have already been silly press articles.  The BBC article says Researchers at the Cresst experiment in Italy say they have spotted 67 events in their detectors that may be …

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Have they found that elusive goddamn particle?

Well, maybe…  As was the case with Tevatron’s false alarm, it’s far too soon to say that the search for “that damned elusive [Higgs] particle” is over.  But there is a difference this time. I thought something was up when I read the Guardian’s tame particle physicist Jon Butterworth’s post on Thursday. I’m writing this on the plane home from CERN. I would have loved to post more about ATLAS preparations for the European Physical Society meeting in Grenoble, but …

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Tevatron’s false alarm

As the BBC reports, independent checks on a separate experiment at Fermilab’s Tevatron accelerator have found no evidence of “a completely new, unanticipated particle” the BBC had previously reported researchers had said they had found “compelling hints of”.  And, therefore, no signal of “a new fundamental force of nature, and the most radical change in physics for decades.” Which means Jon Butterworth was right to be sceptical [and his money’s safe! – Ed] Indeed.  I did say that BBC report was …

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Tevatron: “My money is on the false alarm at the moment”

A somewhat excited BBC report of potentially ground-breaking interim results from Cern LHC rival accelerator, Tevatron, is undermined by the statistical possibility of a false alarm. The Guardian’s tame particle physicist, at Cern, Jon Butterworth explains. If the histograms and data are exactly right, the paper quotes a one-in-ten-thousand (0.0001) chance that this bump is a fluke. That’s pretty small; although bear in mind that lots of distributions like this get plotted. If you plot 100 different distributions, the chances become about …

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“that damned elusive particle…”

Earlier this week there was unfounded speculation that the Tevatron particle collider at Fermilab had already discovered the Higgs boson.  But if their funding is continued, and it probably will be, they could still take that particular prize ahead of the Large Hadron Collider at Cern. Understandably in the circumstances, all scientific eyes have been on the International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP) in Paris this weekend. The Guardian’s Science Blog’s Jon Butterworth is there In the final session of the …

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