Higgs boson: We have found the God particle, claim scientists at Cern

Scientists today said they have found strong evidence for the “God particle” which gives matter mass and holds the universe together.

The elusive Higgs boson particle is the key to understanding how the universe is built and why some objects have mass and others possess only energy.

The historic announcement, which is the most important in physics for decades, was made by the team at the world’s biggest atom smasher — the Large Hadron Collider — at Cern, Geneva.

It was greeted with spontaneous applause by physicists present including Briton Peter Higgs, the professor who first suggested that the particle existed.

What has been found at Cern is a new particle which scientists say behaves like Higgs. The team are 99.99  per cent certain that the discovery matches their expectations of the God particle.

Professor John Womersley, chief executive of the Science and technology Facilities Council, hailed it as “a momentous day for science”.

He said: “They have discovered a particle consistent with the Higgs boson. Discovery is the important word. That is confirmed. It’s a momentous day for science.”

Joe Incandela, spokesman for one of the two teams hunting for the Higgs particle, said: “This is a preliminary result, but we think it’s very strong and very solid.”

Finding the Higgs plugs a gaping hole in the theory known as the Standard Model. This describes all the particles, forces and interactions that make up the universe. If the particle were shown not to exist, it would have meant tearing up the Standard Model and going back to the drawing board.

The process of proving the Higgs is real has been a gradual one.

In December last year scientists at the LHC — the “Big Bang” particle accelerator which recreates conditions a billionth of a second after the birth of the universe — revealed they had caught a first tantalising glimpse of the Higgs. Since then they have sifted through vast quantities of data from innumerable high energy collisions in an effort to reduce the odds of being wrong.