CERN Quashes ‘God Particle’ Rumors

The atom-smashers at CERN have quelled rumors that the elusive Higgs boson "God particle" has been found. A leaked internal memo that suggested detectors at the Large Hadron Collider had found signs of the particle caused excitement when it was posted on a science blog, but CERN says nothing has been verified, the Telegraph reports.

"The majority of these things turn out to be nothing at all," a spokesman says. "It is very speculative at this stage, but there is a great deal of excitement and anticipation that something will be found, which is probably why this has found its way onto the Internet." Finding the Higgs boson, believed to impart mass to everything else in the universe, is seen as the last step toward proving the standard model of particle physics, notes CBC. With the LHC now fully operational, scientists say they hope to prove the particle's existence by the end of next year. (More Higgs boson stories.)