'God particle' goes missing: Higgs boson 'may not exist' say Hadron Collider scientists

Signals reported in July seemed to indicate that the Higgs boson - a long-theorised particle seen as a missing link in our current understanding of physics - might have been detected among data the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva.

But since then, those signals - hinting that the theoretical 'God' particle might have a mass between 120 and 140GeV - looked much less conclusive among new statistics received from the experiment.

Guido Tonelli, spokesman for the Compact Muon Solenoid Detector, a huge particle detector at CERN employing 3,600 scientists, told the BBC's Today programme this week, 'If we exclude the existence of the Higgs this will be a major discovery - it would completely review our vision of nature.'

Tonelli said, 'We should be patient in this search,' he said, 'This machine is so powerful we will be able to explore completely new territory.'

'The standard model of particle physics has lasted for forty years,' CERN spokesman James Gillies told Mail Online today, 'But it's a flawed theory. Something within it has got to give. At the kind of energies the LHC is probing, we are investigating what generates the mass of particles. Higgs is just one theory.

'Higgs is the most popular because it's mathematically appealing,' says Gillies. 'If we don't find the Higgs, we will go on to find whatever else it is that is generating mass.'



Source: dailymail.co.uk