All Signs Point to Higgs, but Scientific Certainty Is a Waiting Game

In their bones, physicists feel it is the long-lost Higgs boson, but in science, feelings take second place to data. So these same physicists admit that it will take more work and analysis before they will have the cold numbers that clinch the case that the new particle announced on July 4 last year is in fact the exact boson first predicted by Peter Higgs and others in 1964 to be the arbiter of mass and cosmic diversity. “Personally, I have no problems calling this a Higgs boson,” said Joe Incandela, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and spokesman, or leader, of one of the teams, known as CMS, that reported the new particle last July. “If it’s not, I won’t mind eating my words, because it would be so much more interesting.”