Cold fusion all over again?

Well, no.

Earlier this summer, the physics world was jolted by a rumor that a team of scientists from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, in Batavia, Ill., had found a bump in their data that might be a legendary particle that has haunted physicists for a generation. It is known colloquially as the Higgs boson and sometimes grandly as the “God particle.” According to the Standard Model that has ruled physics for 30 years, the Higgs endows elementary particles in the universe with mass.

The history of physics is full of bumps that could have been revolutionary but have disappeared like ghosts in the night, and this rumor of a possible Higgs sighting was not even the first this year. Most physicists who have heard this rumor think that this bump is likely to be another of those disappearing anomalies, like the trimuons that frustrated Dr. Weinberg. But then these same physicists point out that you never know.

Happily, they're being extremely cautious with their findings. At such an infinitesimal level, when the data that corresponds with particular findings is so susceptible to poor signal to noise ratios, it's not uncommon for experiments to appear to validate major yet elusive theoretical phenomena. Its just that the data's not worthwhile. That's what's likely happened here. If on the off chance that that's not what happened here, though, it'll no doubt make these guys really, really angry.