Growing Consensus: The Higgs Boson Exists

It's a long, slow road from tentative discovery, to various forms of peer review, to wide acceptance, never mind theory and experimental design, but recent years' work to pin down the Higgs Boson seem to be bearing fruit in the form of cautious announcements. FBeans writes with excerpts from both the New York Times ("Physicists announced Thursday they believe they have discovered the subatomic particle predicted nearly a half-century ago, which will go a long way toward explaining what gives electrons and all matter in the universe size and shape.") and from The Independent ("Cern says that confirming what type of boson the particle is could take years and that the scientists would need to return to the Large Hadron Collider — the world's largest 'atom smasher' — to carry out further tests. This will measure at what rate the particle decays and compare it with the results of predictions, as theorised by Edinburgh professor Peter Higgs 50 years ago.")

Comments

Proof

[Sparticus789]

Consensus =! fact . In fact, there is no option in the scientific method for consensus to mean anything.

Currently, the existence of the Higgs Boson is hypothetical, until the discovery can be replicated numerous times and become a theory, which is a generally accepted scientific fact. One test showing the Higgs Boson particle does not turn it into theory, it merely means that other scientists now have a framework to prove the hypothesis.