Cern looks set to make major Higgs announcement

Scientist expectant, awaiting possible confirmation of the so-called 'God particle'

The search for the unfortunately nicknamed "God particle" looks like it might soon be over. The particle physics community is abuzz with rumours that scientists at Cern are about to confirm the existence of the so-called Higgs Boson.

Cern scientists tend to unveil their latest breakthroughs ahead of the global high energy physics conference, which takes place this year in Melbourne, Australia.

Last year, Cern said its Large Hadron Collider had detected the first inklings that Higgs was indeed real. Now it seems they are preparing to go further.

According to science journal Nature, sources at Cern have confirmed that they are preparing to make a major announcement at a press conference scheduled for Wednesday.

The physics community has been holding its collective breath, awaiting confirmation that Higgs does indeed exist. It was first theorised in the 1960s, as a mechanism to explain how matter derives its mass.

But confirming the existence (or otherwise) of this particle is no mean feat. It's generally agreed that scientists will not announce the discovery of Higgs until the evidence for its existence, drawn from analysing the outcome of a great many particle collisions, can be demonstrated to have just a 0.00006 per cent chance of being due to chance alone.

Whether Cern's latest results from the LHC pass that level of confidence remains to be seen - indeed, it could be the case that they've discovered an entirely different new particle.

And proof of Higgs' existence appears to be growing.

Scientists at rival US atom-smashing experiment, the Tevatron at Fermilab, have been pouring over the the data from their last set of experiments conducted at the facility. They have also confirmed they had seen the strongest indication of Higgs yet.