Not Even Wrong reports:
Science news in the media today is full of stories about Fermilab
finding no less than five Higgs particles:
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/15/higgs_bosons/>God Particles
Breeding Like Bosons,
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/large-hadron-collider/7829090/The-God-particle-may-exist-in-five-forms-Large-Hadron-Colliders-rival-project-finds.html>The
'God Particle' may exist in five forms, Large Hadron Collider's rival
project finds,
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10313875.stm>US
experiment hints at 'multiple God particles',
<http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/06/15/2324254/Fermilab-Experiment-Hints-At-Multiple-Higgs-Particles>Fermilab
Experiment Hints at Multiple Higgs Particles. The source of these
stories can be traced back to this
<http://arxiv.org/abs/1005.4238>preprint, whose authors then appeared
on <http://www-hep.phys.cmu.edu/%7Epaulini/WRCT/>this radio program,
leading to
<http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2010/06/04/could-dzero-result-point-to-multiple-higgses/>this
Symmetry Breaking story.
On May 18 D0
<http://www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/press_releases/CP-violation-20100518.html>claimed
observation of CP violation in processes involving B-mesons of a sort
that could not be explained by the SM, at a significance level of
around 3 sigma. For an explanation, a good place to look is
<http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-physics-claim-from-d0.html>Resonaances.
A violation of the SM is an extraordinary claim, so it requires some
extraordinary evidence, and a 3-sigma result is not that
extraordinary. The case for such a violation was strengthened by the
fact that D0 and CDF had seen a 2-sigma violation of the SM in a
similar CP-violating process. The May 23 theory theory preprint tries
to explain these SM violations with a model involving two Higgs
doublets. Two days later though, on May 25, CDF
<http://agenda.infn.it/getFile.py/access?contribId=12&resId=0&materialId=slides&confId=2635>reported
new results: with better data, their 2-sigma SM violation had gone
away (now it is 0.8 sigma, completely consistent with the SM). Again,
for a good explanation of this, see
<http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2010/05/cdf-says-calm-down-everybody.html>Resonaances.
Somehow, the disappearance of one of the main reasons for taking all
this seriously didn't make it into the Symmetry Breaking story, or
any of the flood of ridiculous stories that appeared today.
<http://www.math.columbia.edu/%7Ewoit/wordpress/?p=3019>Link
