Nick Collins: Search for God Particle is Nearly Over!

At a special meeting at the Cern laboratory near Geneva in Switzerland, scientists from the two main experiments targeting the Higgs boson will disclose their latest findings. While researchers from the ATLAS and CMS teams regularly present batches of their most recent data, there is particular excitement surrounding the seminar on December 13. Although scientists are unlikely to announce conclusive evidence of whether or not the particle exists, their data could be strong enough to make a confident guess one way or the other. There is added excitement within the scientific community, because the two teams, both of which include British experts, will not be comparing their results beforehand to avoid biasing their interpretation of their own data. This means even the researchers involved will not know until the seminar what their findings mean in the context of the results from the other group. The Higgs boson is a theoretical particle, which scientists believe gives mass to everything in the universe, and is a key component of the Standard Model of physics. While finding it in its expected form would confirm common theories on how atoms are put together, identifying a number of Higgs bosons with different masses or disproving the particle entirely would overturn many assumptions of modern physics.