An LHC image of a Higgs boson decaying into two jets of hadrons and two electrons.

A rumor is floating around the physics community that the world’s largest atom smasher may have detected something called the Higgs boson. Also known as the “God particle”, it has long eluded physicists who believe it could explain why objects have mass. It was apparently crucial to forming the cosmos after the Big Bang took place.

The speculation is based on a leaked internal note, said to be from physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 17 mile-long particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland. The rumours started when an anonymous post disclosed part of the note on Columbia University mathematician Peter Woit’s blog, Not Even Wrong.  The leaked note suggests that the LHC’s ATLAS particle-detection experiment may have picked up a signature of the elusive Higgs. The signal is consistent in mass and other characteristics with what the Higgs is expected to produce, according to the note.

While some physicists are dismissing the note as a hoax, others say the find could be a huge particle physics breakthrough in understanding the workings of the universe. Physicist Sheldon Stone of Syracuse University explains:

“If it were to be real, it would be really exciting. Its production rate is much higher than that expected for the Higgs boson in the Standard Model. The signal may be evidence of some other particle, which in some sense would be even more interesting, or it could be the result of new physics beyond the Standard Model. The note, however, is not an official result of the ATLAS research team, so speculation about its validity or implications, therefore, may be a little premature. It is actually quite illegitimate and unscientific to talk publicly about internal collaboration material before it is approved. So this ‘result’ is not a result until the collaboration officially releases it.”

[Source: Daily Mail]