Spring is my favourite season in Batavia, watching peaks blossom in every distribution... A comment by Lubos Motl (in the thread of a post of mine on Higgs searches in ZZ decay modes) alerted me of a new result by the DZERO collaboration, where a significant (2.5 standard deviations) fluctuation of the data in the mass distribution of t-prime quarks makes its ephemeral appearance. Lubos already covered it in his blog.

Note: updated list of links at the bottom.

(Older Note: Bet on this signal! See at the bottom of the article! Odds are two to one in your favour now!)

(Older note: Update at the bottom.)

It seems I am late on this one -an internal note by the Atlas collaboration seems to contain the discovery of a bump in the diphoton mass distribution from data collected in 2010 and 2011. They find a signal that seems consistent, in mass and resolution, with what one would expect from a Higgs decay, if the Higgs were sitting at 115 GeV, the value at which LEP II found some hint (a 1.7 standard deviation signal) before being shut down in 2001.

That's because you never learn anything new.

[By the way: if you were coming here to learn the solution of my riddle about the mysterious plot I posted here yesterday, be patient - I will publish an answer tomorrow on that issue.]

After the disturbance created by the Higgs rumour in ATLAS, I think we can go back to normal business - in this case, keeping my word on discussing things that were left hanging.

Your response to my small riddle was quite good, forcing me to provide a timely and exhaustive explanation of what is in the plot I posted a few days ago.