Hunting the Higgs in the Palais de Congres

Having just arrived at ICHEP, it's clear that it isn't just the media who have Higgs fever; the particle physicists have caught it too. The first session I attended focused on the performance of the LHC experiments with first data - it was well-attended, but there were plenty of empty seats. I'm now in the 16:15 Standard Model and Electroweak Symmetry Breaking session, and it's standing room only to hear the five Higgs talks; four of which are low-mass and high-mass Higgs search results from CDF and DZero.

Of course one could argue that the LHC presentations are being held in a larger room (the Salle Maillot, where the presentations are also being webcast), but I think that's only part of the story. Wandering around during the afternoon coffee break I couldn't help but overhear several conversations with a Higgs theme, and I suspect the Higgs also had quite a lot to do with the presence of a good number of journalists at the Palais de Congres during these first parallel sessions.

Can't wait to see what the presentations will reveal, this afternoon and over the next week - and how the physicists in attendance (including my fellow bloggers) will interpret them!