IN AN apparently accidental leak on the Cern website, the discovery of a new boson has been revealed. The scientific community is widely expecting an announcement of the discovery of the Higgs boson, sometimes referred to as the God particle, tomorrow 4 July 2012.
A video describing the discovery was placed on the Cern website some time today, labelled “Joe Incandela, CMS Spokesperson, on CMS progress on the search for the Higgs Boson, 4 July 2012“. The video was, we believe, first noticed by Kate Travis, an editor at Science News.
In the video, Incandela confirms that a new particle has been identified, and confirms that it is a boson because it decays into two photons. The mass of the particle is given as about 130gigaelectronvolts, which is in the range of expected masses for the Higgs.
We’re adding a copy the video to the Labhomepage Youtube channel for safekeeping, but in the meantime (and assuming it isn’t pulled) it can be seen here: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1458886