By Devin Powell
The world’s most powerful atom smasher has given physicists a tantalizing — but inconclusive — hint that the long-sought Higgs particle actually exists.
The Higgs is the last undiscovered elementary particle predicted by the standard model, physicists’ leading framework for describing the constituents of matter and transmitters of force. Its discovery would confirm the theory that matter particles acquire their mass by interacting with a pervasive Higgs field occupying all space.