"CMS team said they had identified a boson with a mass of 125.3 billion electron volts, about 100 times the mass of a proton. The Atlas team said they had seen a mass of 126 billion electron volts. Both observations are now at what researchers call the five-sigma level, which means that there is only about one chance in 3.5 million that the results are produced by chance. That is the level of certainty researchers generally require before announcing the "discovery" of a particle. The two teams will now spend many years trying to characterize the properties of the new particle and determine whether it is a unique entity or just one of several different forms of the Higgs boson. If there proves to be one and only one Higgs boson, its discovery would provide confirmation of the so-called Standard Model of physics. If there are more than one form, then theorists might have to develop a revised model of how the universe works." - Adriano

"In his 1993 book, "The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What is the Question?" Nobel laureate Leon Lederman half-jokingly coined the term God particle because the Higgs boson is so crucial to the existence of the universe. Peter Higgs was present at the CERN announcement." -ibid. \\ N.B. couple days ago, data from the U.S. Department of Energy's Tevatron collider near Chicago indicated that the Higgs—if it exists—is consistent with a mass of 125 GeV. "We have enough to get me excited that I'd be willing to bet your house it's real but not enough to bet my house," said particle physicist Rob Roser. - Adriano

Stephen Hawking on Higgs boson: 'Discovery has lost me $100' -- video http://www.bbc.co.uk/news... [bet made a decade ago was lost to Gordon Kane, physics prof. at University of Michigan] - Adriano

According to Tuts, Lederman originally called it the *Goddamn* Particle.... Greene shows Charlie Rose the Standard Model on a t-shirt... 23-min video: http://www.charlierose.com/view... - Adriano