Geneva: Scientists said on Tuesday they had found signs of the Higgs boson, an elementary particle believed to have played a vital role in the creation of the universe after the Big Bang.
Scientists at the CERN physics research centre near Geneva said, however, they had found no conclusive proof of the existence of the particle which, according to prevailing theories of physics, gives everything in the universe its mass.
"If the Higgs observation is confirmed...this really will be one of the discoveries of the century," said Themis Bowcock, a professor of particle physics at Britain's Liverpool University.
"Physicists will have uncovered a keystone in the makeup of the Universe...whose influence we see and feel every day of our lives."
The leaders of two experiments, ALTAS and CMS, revealed their findings to a packed seminar at CERN, where they have tried to find traces of the elusive boson by smashing particles together in the Large Hadron Collider at high speed.
"Both experiments have the signals pointing in essentially the same direction," said Oliver Buchmueller, senior physicist on CMS. "It seems that both Atlas and us have found the signals are at the same mass level. That is obviously very important."
Fabiola Gianotti, the scientist in charge of the ATLAS experiment, said ALTAS had narrowed the search to a signal centred at around 126 GeV (Giga electron volts), which would be compatible with the expected strength of a Standard Model Higgs.
"I think it would be extremely kind of the Higgs boson to be here," she told a seminar to discuss the findings. "But it is too early" for final conclusions, she said. "More studies and more data are needed. The next few months will be very exciting...I don't know what the conclusions will be."
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