Higgs Boson 'God Particle' on Verge of Being Discovered
There is renewed excitement in the world of physics dealing with the search for the elusive Higgs boson, otherwise referred to as the "God particle."
Physicists from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., claim to have found new evidence that could lead to the Higgs boson. This particular particle is theorized to give particles their mass.
The scientists explain that a spike recorded in their data could be due to the Higgs boson. The new observation, when compared with the data that was collected during a recent experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, loosely agrees with the results.
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"Based on the current Tevatron data and results compiled through December 2011 by other experiments, this is the strongest hint of the existence of a Higgs boson," according to the report.
Full disclosure of the results will be made available during a presentation on Wednesday by Wade Fisher of Michigan State University, who is attending a physics conference in La Thuile, Italy.
The recent development has physicists excited as to the possibility of finally finding the highly sought after particle.
"The end game is approaching in the hunt for the Higgs boson," Jim Siegrist, associate director of science for high energy physics at the Department of Energy.
"This is an important milestone for the Tevatron experiments, and demonstrates the continuing importance of independent measurements in the quest to understand the building blocks of nature."
The Higgs boson is thought to give mass to other particles. It is the missing link that would unify the Standard Model of physics which is a theory that explains how subatomic particles interact.
The process of searching for the Higgs boson is rather simple yet requires extremely sensitive equipment.
Scientists send particles at very high rates of speed and crash them into one another, and study their effects. Through this process scientists are, in simple terms, able to retrace exactly what occurred during the collision and follow any particles that may deviate from what was expected to happen.
