Both teams claim to have seen a "bump" in their data corresponding to a particle weighing between 125 and 126 gigaelectronvolts (GeV) – about 130 times heavier than the proton at the heart of every atom.
While scientists seem confident that this is a new particle, it remains to be seen whether its properties are as expected for Higgs boson, the final missing ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics.
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If the particle's properties fit the profile of Higgs boson, it could confirm theories about the fundamental particles from which every visible thing in the universe is made, and the forces acting between those things.However, the matter that we can see only represents about 4 percent of the total, so a more complex version of the Higgs particle could be a bridge to understanding the 96 percent of the universe that remains obscure.
