Scientists claim glimpse of ‘Higgs’ particle

Excitement is building in the science world ahead of an anticipated announcement about a possible sighting of the Higgs Boson particle, the essential matter that physicists consider the building block of the universe.

At the CERN research centre in Geneva two independent teams of scientists are expected to claim today that they may have spotted it. It is big news for them, but experts stress it will not change much for the rest of us.

Dr. Malcolm Fairbairn, Senior Lecturer of Physics at King’s College London, said: “It won’t change our everyday lives. This is about amassing knowledge about the origin of mass and the origin of the universe. It’s about understanding how the particles that we know we’re made of, how they get mass and where they come from, but it won’t have any immediate implications. Maybe a few thousand years down the line we’ll find some way of using the Higgs field, but not in the immediate future.”

The illusive particle has been the object of a quest by so-called ‘Higgs Hunters’ since it was first postulated in the 1960s.

It is thought to have emerged from the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. Higgs Boson is a key component in the all-encomposing theory of how the cosmos works at its most basic level.

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