Rumours emanating from the Large Hadron Collidor project are suggesting that the elusive so-called “God Particle” may have been found.
Unconfirmed reports from a leaked internal memo suggests that one of the detectors at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, near Geneva, might have picked up signals that could be the long sought after particle, called the Higgs boson.
The Large Hadron Collider project aims to use their massive £6 billion atom smasher to prove or disprove the existence of the Higgs boson, a theoretical particle believed to give everything in the universe mass.
The particle is an essential aspect of the model used by scientists to describe how particles and atoms are made up, and rumours that evidence of this Higgs boson had been discovered began after an internal memo was posted on the internet.
However, other scientists have been quick to disregard the claim since many candidates for the particle that appear in the collision experiments at the LHC are easily dismissed after closer examination.
Some experts even denounced the memo as a hoax, but a spokesperson for CERN, James Gillies, while admitting the memo was genuine said it was one of thousands currently being produced by the physicists and that it still needed to undergo further assessment.
Gillies said: "It is far too early to say if there is anything to it or not. There are 3,000 scientists working on ATLAS and they divide the analysis work up between them.
"This is an internal communication that highlights something interesting, but it has to go through several stages of assessment by the scientific team before it will be released as an official result by the collaborative team.
"The majority of these things turn out to be nothing at all. 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."
However, the official caution has not served to dampen the intense and excited speculation on various internet blogs and scientific websites.