At Physics Conference, Scientists Say They Are Closing In on 'God Particle'
As particle physicists gather this week for a conference in Paris, they're reporting progress toward finding the elusive Higgs boson, with two groups suggesting a Higgs discovery may not be far off. Physicists from Fermilab in Illinois announced they combined the results of two experiments to refine their search for the Higgs, sometimes called the "God particle" because it is thought to endow particles with mass. Calculations of quantum effects that involve the Higgs say it has to be a certain size, between 114 and 185 GeV/c2. That means giga-electron volts divided by the speed of light squared. It's easier to think in terms of relative sizes, so for comparison: 100 GeV/c2 is equivalent to 107 times the mass of a proton. That means the Higgs is a lot more massive than a proton. The latest Fermilab tests rule out about a quarter of the Higgs' expected size range. This means...