Higgs boson rumour has science agog

THE scientific community is abuzz with rumours that the “God particle”, which is vital to supporting Einstein’s ideas on the working of the universe, has been sighted.

Cern, the European organisation for nuclear research, is expected to make an announcement tomorrow.

While that is not expected to involve a full scientific discovery, even confirmation that something such as the long-sought Higgs boson, had been spotted would point the way to major advances in knowledge of the cosmos.

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“I am feeling quite a level of excitement,” said Oliver Buchmueller, a senior member of one of the two teams seeking the particle amid vast volumes of data gathered in Cern’s Large Hadron Collider.

And science bloggers with close contacts among the front-line research groups, known as Atlas and CMS, said their understanding was that both had found signals that looked very much like the Higgs.

“The anticipation among physics enthusiasts is almost palpable,” said theoretician Sascha Vongehr on his blog.

The observation of a “light Higgs” would be announced at a Cern seminar tomorrow, he added.

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