Cern scientists suspect glimpse of Higgs boson

Getting Closer.
This will be big when they can finally confirm it.

Guardian.co.uk
Scientists may have caught their first glimpse of the elusive Higgs boson, which is thought to give mass to the basic building blocks of nature.

Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, the European particle physics lab near Geneva, announced the findings at a conference on Friday.

The world's most powerful atom smasher hunts for signs of new physics by slamming subatomic particles together at nearly the speed of light in an 18-mile round tunnel beneath the French-Swiss border.

Speaking at the meeting, teams working on two of the collider's huge detectors, Atlas and CMS, independently reported unusual bumps in their data that could be the first hints of the particle.

Physicists stressed that it was too early to know whether the signals were due to the missing particle.

Bumps that look like new discoveries can be caused by statistical fluctuations in data, flaws in computer models and other glitches, they said.