God ain’t got nothin’ to do with this Higgs

Here’s another reason why this morning (er, noon – whatever) is so awesome:

Scientists using the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva have announced the discovery of a new subatomic particle to very high confidence that is consistent with what we expect the Higgs particle to look like.

[…]

Two different detectors at the LHC both independently found a strong signal between 125 and 126 GeV at about the 5 sigma level – that means they can claim a 99.9999% confidence this signal is real! This means they found a previously undiscovered particle which, as it happens, is within the range of mass the Standard Model predicts for the Higgs particle!

Can dudes squee? You know what, I don’t care. Squeeee!

Honestly, I’ve got nothing to say about this other than that it’s unfathomably awesome (and that the “God particle” label elicits a certain amount of ironic schadenfreude in me for some reason), so just go read Phil Plait’s above-linked article and bask in the glory of that unstoppable scientific progress.

Oh, and be on the lookout for this^[NSFW]. Can’t be too careful.

Why, yes, of course I had to go there.

Tags: Large Hadron Collider • LHC • Higgs Boson • particle physics • CERN • European Organization for Nuclear Research