Scientific breakthrough: Discovery believed to be the elusive 'God particle'

EVERYONE KNEW it was going to be big, internationally important, historic. It was a scientific conference where something completely new and ground-changing was about to be announced.

Those in the lecture theatre at Cern – the European centre for nuclear research – and indeed around the world were about to be told whether the elusive Higgs boson, the so-called God particle, had been discovered.

Had they found it? Was it safe to abandon the notion that it might not exist at all? Or had they found something completely new?

Special guests of course had been invited. Peter Higgs, the man after whom the elusive boson is named, was flown into Geneva specially for the event. His arrival was marked by a prolonged round of applause.

Seats were also held for other scientists including François Englert, who along with Higgs in the 1960s devised theories about the big problem in particle physics – how particles that don’t have mass somehow acquire it spontaneously.

There had been something of a scrum earlier. The 300 seats available in the theatre were available on a first come basis for the 9am start, but by 6.30am the queue was already too big. People would have to make do with telecasts organised at 10 other locations across the Cern complex. Thousands such as myself relied on a live web feed to keep tabs on the event.

Then Rolf Heuer, Cern’s director general, stepped forward to set things in motion. It was a scientific conference like none I had ever seen; speakers so full of nervous anticipation that their voices trembled, the hushed silence of an audience hanging on every word.

First came Joe Incandela, spokesman for CMS, one of the big experiments attached to Cern’s Large Hadron Collider. The presentations were almost unintelligible for non-scientists, but then the tone changed.

“We have an excess that is pretty substantial at 125 GeV. You can see there is something quite interesting here,” he said as he flipped up a new slide.

The room erupted in applause. Here was the initial proof that a Higgs-like particle had been found. “We have observed a new boson,” he said. All the while Higgs sat passively, but clearly following the proceedings intently.

Next came Fabiola Gianotti, spokeswoman for experimenters working with the Atlas experiment on the collider. She too launched into a complex presentation that held the audience like a vice. Slides depicting streams of data flowed across the screen. Then she too brought the audience to life. “We have found something in expectation of the Standard Model,” she declared as those attending burst into loud applause. “I think we all have to be proud of the results.”

Heuer again took the floor, declaring to the meeting: “As a layman I would say I think we have it. Would you agree?”

At that, the delegates jumped to their feet as one, breaking into a standing ovation for the presentations, but also for Higgs. The outpouring seemed to touch him as he daubed his eyes with a tissue as the applause continued.

“I would like to add my congratulations for this remarkable achievement,” he said. “It is really a remarkable thing that has happened in my lifetime. I am rather surprised it would happen in my lifetime, more than 40 years after the theory.”

Prof Heuer was determined to dampen down claims of a Higgs boson in the press conference that followed. “We have a discovery, we have discovered a boson. It may be the Higgs boson,” he said. It would take more data before this claim could be made final.”

He also assured those in attendance that this was only the beginning, a jumping off point for many new discoveries and new science. As the proceedings ended, one could not help but feel that something historic had just happened.