‘God particle’ may have been found by scientists

IT is one of the most elusive particles in physics — and speculation is mounting that scientists will next week announce it has been found.

The Higgs boson, also known as the “God particle”, has been hunted for years, having long been predicted by various models of physics. It is considered a key in understanding why there is mass in the universe.

On Tuesday, scientists at CERN, the European physics lab based near Geneva, may announce that the world’s biggest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, has seen the particle.

Two teams will unveil the findings of their data from the billions upon billions of LHC collisions.

Although blogs and websites have been abuzz with rumours that it has been discovered, researchers are giving little away. For one thing, more data would be needed to make a definite declaration, although speculation has it that such data would be made available next year. For another, it is believed that the Higgs boson is too small for the LHC to see directly, but would leave signatures of its presence.

“You have to determine that it is the Higgs bomb and not some shrapnel from the background,” Vivek Sharma, a UC San Diego physicist who heads up one of the two search teams at CERN, told the Los Angeles Times. He said scientists would have to analyse trillions of collisions to tell the difference.

The LHC is thought to have caused 350 trillion to 400 trillion collisions this year alone. However, it is thought the announcement on Tuesday will indicate the particle’s mass.

The two teams work independently and use different technologies in order to work as a cross-check for one another’s results.