[TheLucyLee]

By Rob Waugh | 07:17 GMT, 4 July 2012 | The Daily Mail

The hunt for the Higgs boson - the ‘God particle’ that holds the universe together - is over.

Scientists at Switzerland's CERN (the European Council for Nuclear Research) announced the
discovery to an audience including Professor Peter Higgs, who first suggested the existence of
the particle four decades ago.

Professor Higgs, 83, wiped a tear from his eye as the findings were announced, and later said:
'It's really an incredible thing that it's happened in my lifetime.'

An audience of the world's leading physicists rose in a standing ovation to celebrate the find -
the culmination of a decades-long search at the Large Hadron Collider and other particle
accelerators such as America's Tevatron.

The discovery is the biggest leap in physics for decades - filling in a crucial gap in our
understanding of the atom. In the long term, the discovery could lead to new technologies.


Professor Higgs, 83, wiped a tear from his eye as the findings were announced,
and later said: 'It's really an incredible thing that it's happened in my lifetime.'

Professor John Womersley, chief executive of the Science and technology Facilities Council,
said: 'They have discovered a particle consistent with the Higgs boson. Discovery is the
important word. That is confirmed. It's a momentous day for science.'

The discovery fills in the last gap in the 'standard model' of physics - proving Einstein right,
and possibly leading to new technologies built on our understanding of the particle.

Physicists needed the Higgs to plug a gaping hole in the ‘Standard Model’, the theory that
explains all the particles, forces and interactions making up the universe.

So far nothing has been observed to account for mass, and the fact that some particles
weigh more than others.

According to the theory, the Higgs boson is the emissary of an all-pervading ‘Higgs field’
that gives matter mass. The more particles interact with the field, the more massive they
become and the heavier they are.

A Standard Model universe without the Higgs boson could not exist. Everything would
behave as light does, floating freely and not combining with anything else. There would be
no atoms, made from conglomerations of protons, neutrons and electrons, no ordinary
matter, and no us.

Finding no evidence of the Higgs would mean tearing up the Standard Model and going
back to the drawing board with a completely new set of theories.'