July 3, 2012 | 10:58 am

Evidence—er, hints—of the ‘God particle’ found

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Image by Wikipedia/TriTertButoxy

Scientists have been searching for the Higgs boson for some time now. The so-called “God particle” is a hypothetical particle that scientists say would help explain how something came from perceptibly nothing—how massless particles created matter. And yesterday scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Lab near Chicago said they found the best evidence yet of the God particle.

Reuters reports:

The Fermilab scientists found hints of the Higgs in the debris from trillions of collisions between beams of protons and anti-protons over 10 years at the lab’s now-shuttered Tevatron accelerator.

But the evidence still fell short of the scientific threshold for proof of the discovery of the particle, they said, in that the same collision debris hinting at the existence of the Higgs could also come from other subatomic particles.

“This is the best answer that is out there at the moment,” said physicist Rob Roser of Fermilab, which is run by the U.S. Department of Energy. “The Tevatron data strongly point toward the existence of the Higgs boson, but it will take results from the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe to establish a firm discovery.”

The “best answer” as of yet is a long, long ways from proven. Tomorrow, though, may bring more definite evidence, as the physicists at the European particle accelerator, CERN, are set to announce their own findings in the Higgs quest.