Remarks on possible local parity violation in heavy ion collisions

In this Rapid Communication we discuss some observations concerning the possible local parity violation in heavy ion collisions recently announced by the STAR Collaboration. Our results can be summarized as follows (i) the measured correlations for same-charge pairs are mainly in-plane and not out of plane, (ii) if there is a parity-violating component it is large and surprisingly of the same magnitude as the background, and (iii) the observed dependence of the signal on the transverse momentum (pₓ) is consistent with a soft boost in pₓ and thus in line with expectations from the proposed chiral magnetic effect.