Do you remember the multi-muon anomaly in CDF ? The matter was discussed with quite some detail in a series of posts in this blog (back then at wordpress). In a nutshell, CDF could not explain their sample of events containing two muons, when these particles had a very large impact parameter (the impact parameter is the minimum distance of a trajectory from the interaction point: a large value indicates that the particle was produced elsewhere).

For you today here is a test of whether you shoud trust your intuition when confronted with an apparently simple problem. Incidentally, this article is the answer to the "Guess The Plot" riddle I posted a few days ago here.

Suppose you are given two measurements of the same physical quantity. Make it something easy to visualize, such as the length of a stick. They tell you that when measured with method 1 the result was x1=10 cm, with a estimated uncertainty s1=0.1 cm, and when measured with method 2 the result was x2=11 cm, with estimated uncertainty s2=0.5cm. Here is a question for you today: What is your best guess of the length of the stick ?

Totally overshadowed by the news of the new Opera measurement of neutrino speeds, yesterday CERN officially released the combined result of ATLAS and CMS searches for the Higgs boson. The news has been given already in two prominent particle physics blogs (Resonaances and Not Even Wrong), so I think I am not obliged to do anything more than point you to those, who cover the matter quite accurately.

After a more careful reading of the paper, the listening to a seminar on the result, and some discussions, I can share with you a few more details on the Opera measurement.

UPDATE: some technical considerations on the measurement are available in a followup post I wrote after attending a seminar on the new result today. In particular, one startling consideration emerges - if the reading of the 20 MHz Opera clock were off by just one tick, the result would be compatible with v=c.

UPDATE: you can download the new Opera paper at this link. You will need to use the username and password "neuvel".