On the eve of an announcement by CERN on the existence, or indeed continuing non-existence, of the Higg's Boson or 'God Particle', a video has been leaked of an interview with a CERN scientist who says they have observed a particle that could fit the Higg's model. Interestingly, though, CERN have since said the video was one of several recorded in advance. What the?
"We've observed a new particle. We have quite strong evidence that there's something there," says interviewee Joe Incandela, a physicist at the University of California in the United States.
"Its properties are still going to take us a little bit of time. But we can see that it decays to two photons, for example, which tells us it's a boson, it's a particle with integer spin. And we know its mass is roughly 100 times the mass of the proton. And this is very significant. This is the most massive such particle that exists, if we confirm all of this, which I think we will."
You can watch the video over here at the Telegraph.
CERN have since said, however, that the video going live was a mistake, and that it was one of many recorded in advance.
"This video was one of several videos we prerecorded to account for all scenarios," CERN's press office told LiveScience. "For reasons not yet understood, it became temporarily visible."
Which is interesting in and of itself, and puts a nice Nobel-Award-ceremony-spin on the whole thing.
In any case, the whole thing should come to light later this afternoon, when CERN makes its announcement at 5pm AEST.
