God particle

More than 100 Canadian researchers who have been working on an international project into the Higgs boson are eagerly awaiting an announcement that enough evidence has been gathered to say with greater confidence whether or not the long sought after "God particle" exists.

Physicists working at the world’s largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, have already found what they believe are hints pointing to the existence of the last undiscovered particle in the Standard Model of Physics, nicknamed the "God particle" because it is thought to answer fundamental questions about the universe.

But they have so far been unable to prove that the Higgs boson is anything more than a theoretical construct.
That may be about to change, however, as physicists in Australia and Switzerland are expected to announce they have gathered enough data to say with more certainty that the particle exists, though they may stop short of declaring the Higgs boson has been officially "discovered."

Scientists rarely say they are absolutely sure of something, but physicists gathered in Australia for a high-level conference on Wednesday seemed certain that a missing piece in their understanding of all the fundamental particles of nature and their interaction had been found. 

“We’re still a little bit guarded about the full properties of this thing, but the first analysis of the results from the last six months really show that it has all the properties we would expect so far of a Higgs boson,” Mr. Taylor told the national broadcaster ABC. 

The professor has led Australia’s contribution to work at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, where the research was conducted, since 1989.

He explained that the standard model that physicists had worked with for more than 40 years could be confirmed as correct by the Higgs boson.