New results from the Large Hadron Collider have physicists wondering if they have actually, for reals now, detected the signal of a Higgs boson, aka the “God particle.” Earlier this year, scientists at Tevatron (an accelerator at Fermilab) thought they might have picked up the signal of a Higgs boson, but excitement turned to disappointment as it was revealed last month that the result could not be replicated with Tevatron’s other detector.

The Higgs boson is the lynchpin of the Standard Model of particle physics, explaining as it does why particles have mass, so physicists are trying like all get-out to find it. This latest hint at its existence is interesting, but nobody at LHC will be making any definitive statements about the result until they’ve analyzed the data and determined whether these fluctuations are statistically important.

Related posts:

• “God particle” detection in doubt
• “God particle” discovered?

Recommended reading:

• Higgs Boson: One page explanation
• The Elegant Universe: “Viewpoints on String Theory” interview with Steven Weinberg
• “The Making of the Standard Model” (PDF) by Steven Weinberg