It is an exclusive club and now also includes Professor Peter Higgs, who predicted a new particle, the Higgs Boson, in the 1960s, and this year the particle was proved to exist.
The Higgs boson is the only particle theorized by the standard model of physics that hasn't been conclusively observed in an experiment.
Detecting the Higgs boson takes a lot of particle collisions -- there's only one observed event in every trillion proton-proton collisions, CERN said.
Because nobody knows what the mass of a Higgs boson might be, the particle must be hunted indirectly, typically in giant machines that propel particles to near-light speed, then smash them together and generate an array of other subatomic particles.
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This relies upon the critical coupling and therefore is strong evidence that this particle is a Higgs boson.
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Yet the easiest way to sell it to politicians was to frame it as a search for a single particle, the Higgs boson.
Nonetheless, it remains to be seen whether the new particle is the Higgs boson of the standard model, or one of several other bosons predicted by other theories of physics.
Physicists in Geneva are close to discovering the last particle they need to complete the model, the Higgs boson.
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At at a physics conference in March to discuss the discovery of the Higgs, researchers were encouraged to refer to the particle as the "SM Scalar Boson".
It may be about to happen in particle physics - if neither the Tevatron nor Large Hadron Collider spots a Higgs boson soon, the standard model that scientists have worked with for years may have to be abandoned, or at least seriously reformed, and another built in its place.
Indeed, until they do so, they are reluctant to definitively crown the boson, preferring often to say just that they have found a "Higgs-like" particle.
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