GENEVA: In one of the most significant scientific discoveries ever, two independent teams of scientists announced on Wednesday the discovery of a new subatomic particle that has close resemblance to the elusive Higgs boson or ‘God Particle’.
Joe Incandela, spokesperson for CMS, one of the two research teams, told scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) that the data from Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has reached the level of certainty needed for a discovery.
Although the new subatomic particle looks like the one that is believed to give all matter in the universe size and shape, Incandela did not confirm whether the new particle is indeed the tiny and elusive Higgs boson, popularly referred to as the ‘God Particle’.
“We have observed a new boson with a mass of 125.3 plus or minus 0.6 GeV at 4.9 sigma standard deviation. This is a preliminary result, but we think it's very strong and very solid,” announced Joseph Incandela to a round of applause.
“When they combine the results for two decay channels they get Five Sigma for the Higgs. Combined significance of all results 5 standard deviations,” Incandela, who also teaches at the University of California Santa Barbara, said.
In simple terms: CMS discovered a new boson which behaves like the Standard Model Higgs.
Fabiola Gianotti of ATLAS, the other team at the world's biggest atom smasher, announced that they have similar results at around 126 Gev with 5 sigma certainty.
Five Sigma is the usual particle physics threshold for discovery; it translates to 99.99997 percent certainty of discovery of a new particle.
The new particle, if confirmed with further research, would have a mass 130 times that of a proton, making it the most massive particle that exists.