CERN Expected to Announce Higgs Boson Findings

Evidence of the elusive particle's existence would help explain the universe, mass, and why billions of dollars have been spent on the underground particle accelerator.

Scientists at the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland are set to announce tomorrow that they've caught the first-ever glimpses of the Higgs boson – the so-called "God" particle that gives atoms their mass. The Higgs' existence has only been theoretical until this point, and it is the last remaining sub-atomic particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics that has not yet been seen in the physical world. The announcement tomorrow is expected to provide an update on Higgs research and will stop short of claiming that the LHC team has confirmed the Higgs to exist, but observers say a formal discovery would likely be confirmed within a year from now. The Standard Model suggests that the Higgs boson is surrounded by a field that slows down the movement of other sub-atomic particles. This resistance is believed to be the force that gives atoms their mass. Confirmation of the Higgs boson would indicate that that the Standard Model is indeed the correct understanding of particle physics.