"God Particle" Found? "Historic Milestone" From Higgs Boson Hunters
Newfound particle may be at the core of existence.
(See Large Hadron Collider pictures.)
"We have a discovery," Heuer said at the seminar. "We have observed a new particle consistent with a Higgs boson."
At the meeting were four theorists who helped develop the Higgs theory in the 1960s, including Peter Higgs himself, who could be seen wiping away tears as the announcement was made.
Although preliminary, the results show a so-called five-sigma of significance, which means that there is only a one in a million chance that the Higgs-like signal the teams observed is a statistical fluke.
"It's a tremendous and exciting time," said physicist Michael Tuts, who works with the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) Experiment, one of the two Higgs-seeking LHC projects.
The Columbia University physicist had organized a
