Thursday, March 9, 2023

A New 146 GeV LHC Anomaly?

Sabine Hossenfelder has noted a new anomaly at 146 GeV identified by a new paper from the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

I am not holding my breath that it will amount to anything. 

It has a local significance of 3.8 sigma, but a global significance of just 2.8 sigma if there was a particle that decayed into an electron and a muon, for example, which is a pretty weak tension with the Standard Model. 

After all, a deviation of 2 sigma or less from the Standard Model is considered to be "consistent" with the Standard Model, while a 5 sigma deviation is required for new physics to be considered "discovered."

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