For the last year or so there have been “hints” of a Higgs detection, then those hints turned into “potential evidence.” Now, will we finally get word of a bona fide discovery?

“I agree that any reasonable outside observer would say, ‘It looks like a discovery,'” CERN physicist John Ellis told The Associated Press. “We’ve discovered something which is consistent with being a Higgs.”

The Higgs boson is the last piece of the physics Standard Model, a collection of theories that underpin all modern physics. The Higgs particle is theorized to mediate mass — like a photon (also a boson) mediates the electromagnetic force, i.e., light — and creates the “Higgs field” that must pervade the entire Universe, endowing matter with mass.

If the LHC didn’t detect signs of the Higgs particle, its non-discovery would turn modern physics on its head. But physicists are an inquisitive bunch, so a non-discovery would be just as exciting (if not more so) than a discovery.