Professor John Womersley, chief executive of the Science and technology Faciliti es Council, told reporters at a briefing in London:

"They have discovered a part icle consistent with the Higgs boson. "Discovery is the important word. That is confirmed. It's a momentous day for sc ience." THE GOD PARTICLE Scientists say it is a 5 sigma result which means they are 99.999% sure they hav e found a new particle. Finding the Higgs plugs a gaping hole in the Standard Model, the theory that des cribes all the particles, forces and interactions that make up the universe. If the particle was shown not to exist, it would have meant tearing up the Stand ard Model and going back to the drawing board. The Cern laboratory appeared to have let slip its biggest breakthrough in a gene ration after appearing to announce the discovery of a new particle in an online video overnight. In the short film accidentally published by the lab yesterday spokesman Joe Inca ndela is seen describing how physicists at the Large Hadron Collider had "observ ed a new particle". Today scientists gathered in Geneva to announce the findings. Among the audience was Peter Higgs, the Edinburgh professor who first proposed the existence of th e mysterious particle almost 50 years ago. Rumours had been rife that scientists hunting the Higgs were to announce today's finding but the video appeared to confirm the finding of a particle matching it s description hours before it was confirmed. Although their results are said to be strong enough to claim an official discove ry, the scientists will avoid doing so because they remain unsure whether the pa rticle they have found is indeed the Higgs. Cern spokesman James Gillies said the video was one of several filmed to cover e very eventuality and did not directly relate to today's announcement. The Internet has been rife with rumours of a discovery ever since CERN, the Euro pean nuclear research facility, announced it would hold a press conference today with the leaders of its two gigantic experiments, ATLAS and CMS. Sources have told the Telegraph that ATLAS will today announce a 5-sigma signal and CMS will announce a 4.9-sigma signal of a new particle with a mass of 126.5 GigaelectronVolts (GeV) and 125.2 GeV respectively - a result which falls slap b ang in the middle of the tough-to-explore region where many physicists were adam ant the Higgs was hiding. The results being announced today definitively point to a new particle or partic les which fit the description of a Higgs Boson, but further research will be nee ded to characterise it properly. The Higgs boson is the final piece of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, a theoretical model which describes the fundamental particles and forces that cont

rol our Universe. It was first theorised in the 1960s by Edinburgh-based physicist Peter Higgs, am ongst others, and is credited for giving all other particles mass. But until now , it has proved impossible to pin down. To do so, scientists use the LHC to smash together protons at almost the speed o f light and scour the debris for traces of particles that sprang into existence for just a fraction of a second before disintegrating. Sources have told the Telegraph that ATLAS will today announce a 5-sigma signal and CMS will announce a 4.9-sigma signal of a new particle with a mass which mat ches many physicists' idea of a Higgs Boson. An ATLAS researcher said there was "no question" the two detectors are seeing th e same thing, adding: "A lot of bets are going to be settled up [today] . After so many years preparing and searching, it emerge, a CMS Higgs physicist added. s really amazing to see a clear signal

This is the sort of thing that makes me cry, said an ATLAS Higgs physicist. of crying that accompanies winning something or being overwhelmed with happines s. Human thought and ingenuity have continually created and discovered, but this outdoes them all."

It's the