By God, It's a Particle! Or Vice Versa

Yeah, right.

One important thing did happen this week: one of the most interesting searches in physics, launched 48 years ago, hit the jackpot. For fundamental physics as we conceive it today to stand the test, a certain kind of a force field (the Higgs field) had to exist; and if it existed, then a certain kind of particle (the Higgs boson) could be measured under very specific conditions. The only trouble was, when the prediction was made, it was almost unimaginable that humans could ever recreate those conditions. This week, two separate groups of physicists announced that the Higgs boson, or something very much like it, does exist. In fact, they met the highest standard humans have ever held up for knowledge: the odds of their being wrong are less than one in 3.5 million.