In this artist's rendering, two photons (red) smash into one another, and the wreckage (yellow) is where the mysterious "God particle" allegedly comes from.

CERN: Thomas McCauley, Lucas Taylor

cientists say they have likely found "the most sought-after particle in physics." At a seminar in Geneva, Switzerland, researchers announced that they had found a new particle with the characteristics of the Higgs boson, or "God Particle," which is believed to give objects their mass and function as a sort of "invisible glue" that holds the universe together. If scientists have indeed found the Higgs boson, it could help unlock the secrets of the universe and its origins. "We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature," Rolf Heuer, the director general for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the organization that conducted experiments in search of the particle, says. "The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle's properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe." The discovery of the long-sought-after particle would rank as one of the biggest scientific achievements in the last 50 years.