Newly-discovered Subatomic Particle May be 'God Particle,' CERN Confirms

"They have a footprint and a shadow, and the only thing left is to see for themselves the elusive subatomic particle or Higgs Boson."

Physicists say they have all but proven that 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 or Higgs Boson.

Scientists at CERN, the world’s biggest atom smasher, announced Wednesday that they have nearly confirmed the primary plank of a theory that could restructure the understanding of why matter has mass.

“We have now found the missing cornerstone of particle physics,” Rolf Heuer, director of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), told scientists at a conference on July 4.

Heuer said the newly-discovered subatomic particle is indeed a boson, but did not claim outright that this finding is the much-desired Higgs boson – an important distinction.

“As a layman, I think we did it,” said Heuer. “We have a discovery. We have observed a new particle that is consistent with a Higgs boson.”

The Higgs has confounded scientists since 1964, when British physicist Peter Higgs helped lay the conceptual foundation for it.

Experiments to determine whether the Higgs exists are currently being performed using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, and were performed at Fermilab’s Tevatron until its closure in late 2011.

If they can confirm the existence of the Higgs boson, the last missing piece in the standard model of physics, the announcement would rank among the most important scientific breakthroughs of the last century.

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