Eureka! Physicists celebrate evidence of particle
GENEVA (AP) To cheers and standing ovations, scientists at the world's biggest atom smasher claimed the discovery of a new subatomic particle Wednesday, calling it "consistent" with the long-sought Higgs boson popularly known as the "God particle" that helps explain what gives all matter in the universe size and shape.
"We have now found the missing cornerstone of particle physics ," Rolf Heuer , director of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), told scientists.
He said the newly discovered subatomic particle is a boson, but he stopped just shy of claiming outright that it is the Higgs boson itself an extremely fine distinction.
"As a layman, I think we did it," he told the elated crowd. "We have a discovery. We have observed a new particle that is consistent with a Higgs boson."
"It is consistent with a Higgs boson as is needed for the standard model," Heuer said. "We can only call it a Higgs boson not the Higgs boson."
Incandela said the last undiscovered piece of the standard model could be a variant of the Higgs that was predicted or something else that entirely changes the way scientists think about how matter is formed.
"This boson is a very profound thing we have found," he said. "We're reaching into the fabric of the universe in a way we never have done before. We've kind of completed one particle's story ... now, we're way out on the edge of exploration."
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