Fundación General CSIC

Although it won’t cure any diseases tomorrow or solve the world’s energy problems, expectation of a possible scientific discovery could not be greater, as it will deepen our understanding of nature and how the cosmos works. The recent announcement of data from the large hadron collider (LHC) regarding the search for the Higgs particle – the key particle that remains to be discovered to explain the origin of mass – at the LHC, has been hailed as a great scientific event. However, scientists yesterday said it was too early to declare victory. Addressing a packed auditorium, where the audience waited for details of the data from the two big detectors, Atlas and CMS, Rolf Heuer, director of the European Particle Physics Laboratory (CERN) near Geneva, warned the audience “to bear in mind that these are preliminary findings."