• Scientists 'will say they are 99.99% certain' the particle has been found
  • Leading physicists have been invited to event - sparking speculation that Higgs Boson particle has been found
  • 'God Particle' gives particles that make up atoms their mass

By Rob Cooper

PUBLISHED: 08:00 EST, 1 July 2012 | UPDATED: 08:41 EST, 1 July 2012


Scientists at Cern will announce that the elusive Higgs boson 'God Particle' has been found at a press conference next week, it is believed.

Five leading theoretical physicists have been invited to the event on Wednesday - sparking speculation that the particle has been discovered.

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider are expected to say they are 99.99 per cent certain it has been found - which is known as 'four sigma' level.

Big enough to matter: The collider, formed of superconducting magnets, stretches around 17miles or 27km - and is sensitive to the moon's gravity

The particle accelerator: It is within these tubes that physicists are hunting for the 'God' particle

Physicists first predicted that the Higgs Boson subatomic particle exists 48 years ago.

Peter Higgs, the Edinburgh University emeritus professor of physics that the particle is named after, is among those who have been called to the press conference in Switzerland.

Invite: Peter Higgs, the professor the particle is named after, has been asked to attend the press conference at Cern

Invite: Peter Higgs, the professor the particle is named after, has been asked to attend the press conference at Cern

The management at Cern want the two teams of scientists to reach the 'five sigma' level of certainty with their results - so they are 99.99995 per cent sure - such is the significance of the results.

Tom Kibble, 79, the emeritus professor of physics at Imperial College London, has also been invited but is unable to attend.

He told the Sunday Times: 'My guess is that is must be a pretty positive result for them to be asking us out there.'

The Higgs boson is regarded as the key to understanding the universe. Physicists say its job is to give the particles that make up atoms their mass.

Without this mass, these particles would zip though the cosmos at the speed of light, unable to bind together to form the atoms that make up everything in the universe, from planets to people.

The collider, housed in an 18-mile tunnel buried deep underground near the French-Swiss border, smashes beams of protons – sub-atomic particles – together at close to the speed of light, recreating the conditions that existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang.

If the physicists' theory is correct, a few Higgs bosons should be created in every trillion collisions, before rapidly decaying.

A full moon disrupts the circle: An aerial view of the Swiss-French border, indicating the route of the Large Hadron Collider

An aerial view of the Swiss-French border, indicating the route of the Large Hadron Collider

This decay would leave behind a 'footprint' that would show up as a bump in their graphs.

However, despite 1,600 trillion collisions being created in the tunnel - there have been fewer than 300 potential Higgs particles.

Now it is thought that two separate teams of scientists, who run independent experiments in secret from each other, have both uncovered evidence of the particle.

However, the two groups, CMS and ATLAS, are expected to stop short of confirming its existence.

Inside: The giant project is the most enormous piece of scientific apparatus ever constructed, and is buried 100m beneath the ground

Inside: The giant project is the most enormous piece of scientific apparatus ever constructed, and is buried 100m beneath the ground

Here's what other readers have said. Why not add your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards.

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- The Alien, Andromeda, 1/7/2012 9:26 The quest to further our understanding of the universe is what drives mankind forward. Seeking knowledge is not a waste of time, it is what separates us from most other living organisms on our planet and is the result of millions of years of evolution. We cannot always know what our discoveries will lead to but we would still be hunter-gatherers living in caves if we did not have this desire for knowledge.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ You make great assumptions. How do you know this is not a dream? When one wakes up one can see what is the dream and until then you didn't know you were in a dream. Evolution is part of the dream.

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After finding said particle Scientists will then start on the greatest mystery yet to be solved. How has Amanda Holden got a well paid career when in reality she should be working at my local M & S ?

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Quantum Physics makes my head hurt, some I can just about get my head round like Quantum Computing where a particle is both a 1 and a 0 at the same time (still have no idea how or why), but stuff like light particles behaving differently depending on whether they're observed or not?!?! makes is so confusing. I think I'll just be glad there are people doing this to further humanities knowledge and boundaries, as all are existence should be, and hope the practical applications (Quantum Computing) are beneficial. However I'm slightly disappointed that these days you have to be so specialised, you can't be a "Quantum Physicist", you have to be a "Quantum Physicist specialising in the Higgs Boson's effect on alpha particles", because that's a life times work, it's the same within pretty much any scientific endeavour, so no more Lord Calvin's, being able to be a leader in Chemistry, Physics, Maths, Geography e.t.c but I guess that just shows how far we've come...

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Money well spent.

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Let us all hope that it is not Teresa May making the announcement. We all know her track record.

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End of the world

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Was the God particle lost? Maybe hidden in one the the Swiss banks.

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It is because of experiments and research like this, however ridiculous they may seem to the ordinary man and woman in the street, that often solve many of the things that we need for our very existence and well-being. Many things that become part of our lives were brought about by accident when seeking an answer for something not connected to the original research. Probably cancer will be cured in this way. It is a matter of extreme patience and perseverence.

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Now I wonder how long it will be before some bright spark discovers a way to make a weapon with it. Remember what the splitting of the atom by Albert Einstein led to. - simon, sheffield, 01/07/2012 17:10 ----------------- Back to the classroom for you my boy!

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The ignorance on show in this comment section is frightening. On one hand DM readers complain about the selfishness and short sightedness of modern life, but all they can think about this landmark human discovery is how much it cost and how it benefits them. Assuming this can be proven (and it looks very much like it will over the next few weeks) it is one of the finest scientific achievements ever to have been made by man. Essentially the identification of the Higgs boson proves that our theoretical model for physics is correct. If you can't comprehend how profound this event is, frankly you have very little business commenting on the project. Of course, some are pointing to the mistake over 'faster than light particles', but it's important to understand how that 'finding' was illogical and largely dismissed as an error from the outset. It was the media that ran with it. Anyhow, well done to the men and women at CERN. I wonder what else they'll learn from the facility?

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