Scientists Say They’re Homing In on Higgs Particle, Answer to Key Question of the Universe

Physicists announced today that they had narrowed the range where they could find the Higgs boson—a theorized particle that helps create mass in the universe. But they haven’t actually found it. In a Webcast from the physics consortium CERN, which runs the experiments at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider, the physicists Fabiola Gianotti and Guido Tonelli said that out of the immense spectrum of energy they explored, there was a spike of activity around 126 and 124 billion electron volts (GeV), which is how physicists measure mass. (Here are their technical slides. The Guardian, a British newspaper, has a more straightforward explanation if you don’t like charts.) It could be the elusive Higgs, but there are alternate explanations for the spike. At least this makes it easier to focus their detectors, and though Ms. Gianotti said “it would be kind if the Higgs was there,” that kindness will have to be tested again in late January, with more results.