CERN confirms Boson discovery consistent with 'God particle'

Washington, July 4 (ANI): The ATLAS and CMS experiments presented their latest preliminary results in the search for the long sought Higgs Boson particle at a seminar held at CERN1 today as a curtain raiser to the year's major particle physics conference.

Both experiments observe a new particle in the mass region around 125-126 GeV.

"We observe in our data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of 5 sigma, in the mass region around 126 GeV. The outstanding performance of the LHC and ATLAS and the huge efforts of many people have brought us to this exciting stage," said ATLAS experiment spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti, said.

"But a little more time is needed to prepare these results for publication," Gianotti said.

CMS experiment spokesperson Joe Incandela said that the results were preliminary.

"The results are preliminary but the 5 sigma signal at around 125 GeV we're seeing is dramatic. This is indeed a new particle. We know it must be a boson and it's the heaviest boson ever found," Incandela said.

"The implications are very significant and it is precisely for this reason that we must be extremely diligent in all of our studies and cross-checks," he said.

The results presented today have been labelled as preliminary.

They are based on data collected in 2011 and 2012, with the 2012 data still under analysis. Publication of the analyses shown today is expected around the end of July.

A more complete picture of today's observations will emerge later this year after the LHC provides the experiments with more data.

The next step will be to determine the precise nature of the particle and its significance for our understanding of the universe.

The Standard Model describes the fundamental particles from which we, and every visible thing in the universe, are made, and the forces acting between them.

All the matter that we can see, however, appears to be no more than about 4 percent of the total. A more exotic version of the Higgs particle could be a bridge to understanding the 96 percent of the universe that remains obscure.

"We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature," CERN Director General Rolf Heuer, said.

"The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle's properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe," Heuer added. (ANI)