Chasing the "God" Particle

Last month, a team of physicists made a surprising announcement, in which they claim that they might have found an exotic particle, called the Higgs boson, or the "God" particle, as it plays a key role in explaining the origins of the mass of other elementary particles, in particular the difference between the massless photon and the relatively heavy W and Z bosons.

The team, from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, in Batavia, Illinois, had found a bump in their data that might represent the mysterious particle, but so far has not been able to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt, so to say, that they found anything more than a fluctuation in their measurements.

This particle is so important for the scientific community because it is the only Standard Model particle not yet observed, and because its finding would be like discovering the missing link in human evolution.

Some 600 physicists from 19 countries and 88 institutions are part of what is called the D Zero collaboration, which is currently chasing for the hypothetical particle. So far, beyond the first announcement, they were not able to produce any real evidence of its existence.

The history of physics is full of unusual sightings that could have been revolutionary but have disappeared like shadows in the dark, and this rumor of a possible Higgs sighting was not even the first this year.

"It's a rigorous process; we don't want to make a trivial mistake," explained Dmitri Denisov of Fermilab, one of the co-leaders or spokesmen of the team. This is just the official position but some people doubt that they will come up and admit they were wrong, if the data proves it.

And so, the hunt for the God particle continues and so does the mystery about how well it could explain so much in physics, yet it is nowhere to be found.