Text: Jonathan Leake, Science Editor AFTER a search lasting three decades, scientists may have tracked down the most sought-after prize in particle physics. The Higgs boson, nicknamed "God's particle" by some researchers, has been detected in experiments carried out by researchers in Geneva. The Higgs boson is thought to give matter its mass. Without it - or if it had slightly different properties - then stars, planets and, of course, humanity, could never have evolved. Physicists have been trying to find the boson ever since it was first proposed by Peter Higgs, a little-known Edinburgh academic in the early 1960s. So far they have spent an estimated £6 billion on machines and experiments - and failed. "The Higgs boson has been the holy grail of modern physics," said Professor Tiziano Camporesi, who heads one of the four experiments at Cern, the European particle physics centre. "If our findings are confirmed this will prove that our theories of how the universe and matter evolved were right." Higgs, a theoretical physicist at Edinburgh University, had his first paper proposing the boson rejected by Physics Letters, an eminent journal, as "pointless" before it was published in America to general acclaim. As the cost of finding it has risen even he has expressed worries about the idea. This weekend, however, scientists said the discovery, when confirmed, would guarantee a Nobel prize for Higgs, who is now 71 and retired. The Cern experiment involved accelerating tiny subatomic particles called electrons and positrons to near light speed and then annihilating them by smashing them into one another. Such collisions replicate the conditions found just after the Big Bang that is thought to have created the universe. The huge energies and temperatures that are generated produce a shower of other subatomic particles which, in theory, should include the Higgs boson. In 11 years of experiments, scientists at Cern were unable to find the elusive particle. They decided their machine was incapable of achieving the high energies needed and that it would have to be replaced. With the threat of being beaten in the race by an American team, the Cern scientists pumped far more energy into their machine than they had ever dared - and have been rewarded by about half a dozen images bearing all the hallmarks of the Higgs boson. It is possible that the images are artefacts created by other more ordinary particles, but the scientists are increasingly positive. Camporesi said a study of the images showed they were more than 99% certain to be Higgs bosons. Scientists hope to find enough new images to push the risk of being wrong to less than one in 1,000. Peter Dornan, professor of physics at Imperial College, London, ran the Cern experiment that recorded most of the images. "This would rank as one of the leading discoveries of the 21st century," he said. Higgs's idea aimed to solve the puzzle of how atoms and their constituent particles acquire mass. He suggested that the universe is permeated by an undetectable form of energy that has since become known as the Higgs Field. This interacts with the elementary particles that make up ordinary matter. This interaction, he said, results in the formation of Higgs bosons that affect matter particles and give them mass. The role of the Higgs boson has amazed physicists because its interactions with other particles are so exactly what is needed to create a coherent universe. If, for example, the Higgs boson interacted with electrons slightly differently they would be too heavy for the elements vital for life to form. This weekend Higgs was in contact with Cern in the hope his life's work had been proved a triumph. "After all this time I am delighted and relieved that we may finally be close to finding it," he said. Copyright 2000 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard terms and conditions. To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from The Sunday Times, visit the Syndication website. http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/09/10/stifgneur01001.html

See Also:

Source: