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updated: 7/3/2012 12:44 PM

Fermilab helps find evidence of 'God particle'

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  • A physicist explains the ATLAS experiment on a board at the European Center for Nuclear Research, CERN, outside Geneva, Switzerland. The illustration shows what the long-presumed Higgs boson particle is thought to look like. Scientists at CERN plan to make an announcement on Wednesday about their hunt for the elusive subatomic particle.


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Associated Press

GENEVA, Switzerland -- Physicists say they have all but proven the "God particle" exists. They have a footprint and a shadow, and the only thing left is to see for themselves the elusive subatomic particle believed to give all matter in the universe size and shape.

Rob Roser, who leads the search for the Higgs boson at Fermilab in Batavia, said, "Particle physicists have a very high standard for what it takes to be a discovery," and he thinks it is a hair's breadth away. Roser compared the results scientists will announce Wednesday to finding the fossilized imprint of a dinosaur: "You see the footprints and the shadow of the object, but you don't actually see it."

Fermilab, whose atom smasher reported its final results Monday after shutting down last year, said its data doesn't settle the question of the Higgs boson, but it comes tantalizingly close.

Scientists at the world's biggest atom smasher, in Europe, plan to announce Wednesday they have nearly confirmed the primary plank of a theory that could restructure the understanding of why matter has mass, which combines with gravity to give an object weight.


The focus of the excitement is the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle long sought by physicists.

Researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, say they have compiled vast amounts of data that show the footprint and shadow of the particle, even though it has never actually been glimpsed.







Though an impenetrable concept to many, the Higgs boson has until now been just that -- a concept intended to explain a riddle: How were subatomic particles, such as electrons, protons and neutrons, themselves formed? What gives them their mass?



Officially, CERN is presenting its evidence this week at a physics conference in Australia but plans to accompany the announcement with meetings in Geneva. The two teams, known as ATLAS and CMS, then plan to publicly unveil more data on the Higgs boson at physics meetings in October and December. Each of the teams involves thousands of people working independently to ensure accuracy.

The scientific threshold for discovery is high. Scientists have to show with complex formulas there's a less than 1 in 1.7 million chance the findings are a statistical fluke. With two independent experiments showing there's less than 1 in 16,000 chance of being wrong, it's a matter of how their work is put together.

Scientists with access to the new CERN data say it shows with a high degree of certainty the Higgs boson may already have been glimpsed, and that by unofficially combining the separate results from ATLAS and CMS it can be argued a discovery is near. Ellis says at least one physicist-blogger has done just that in a credible way.

CERN spokesman James Gillies said Monday he would be "very cautious" about unofficial combinations of ATLAS and CMS data.



Sean M. Carroll, a California Institute of Technology physicist flying to Geneva for Wednesday's announcement, said if both ATLAS and CMS have independently reached these high thresholds on the Higgs boson, then "only the most curmudgeonly will not believe that they have found it."

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