It’s been a long, difficult—and, for most of us, incomprehensible—search, but scientists at the largest particle accelerator in the world have finally found evidence of the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle that gives the building blocks of matter mass. While researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research’s (CERN) Large Hadron Collider, which straddles the Swiss-French border, wouldn’t go so far as to say they had “discovered” the particle, they did say that after combing through several truckloads’ worth of data, they’ve found its footprint. It’s the best evidence yet for the existence of the long-sought-after particle, a holy grail for physicists hoping to explain some basic facts about the universe. Scientists at CERN will present their findings on Wednesday.
