Update at 9:50 a.m. ET. Not Conclusive:
The presentation continues in Switzerland, where scientists are briefing their peers on the search for the Higgs boson — or so-called God particle — that gives matter mass. The bottomline: They've made progress, "but not enough to make any conclusive statement on the existence or non-existence of the elusive Higgs."
Or, as the BBC puts it, "the most coveted prize in particle physics — the Higgs boson — may have been glimpsed, say researchers reporting at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva. ... But the LHC does not yet have enough data to claim a discovery."
As we said earlier, the 13.7 blog is going to take a crack at explaining all this better than we can. (And at 10:30 a.m. ET, this post is now on 13.7: " The Big 'Maybe': What The 'God Particle' Hunt Tells Us About Science".)
Our original post:
Scientists in Switzerland are this hour reporting on "the status of their searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson" — the so-called "God Particle" that we posted about Monday.
It's thought that the Higgs gives matter mass. The search for it is one of the biggest stories in science.
The event is being webcast here.
We'll watch for the headline news. But our friends at the 13.7 blog will be in better position to explain what it all does or doesn't mean, and NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce will have more about the news later today on All Things Considered.
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