But a statement on the latest findings from huge volumes of data gathered during three years of collisions in the LHC stopped short of claiming the boson, believed to be the particle that gives matter to mass, had been discovered for sure.

Measurement of the behavior of the particle, whose existence was first postulated in the early 1960s, and of its interaction with other particles “strongly indicates that it is the Higgs boson”, CERN said…

“The preliminary results with the full set of 2012 data are magnificent, and to me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson, although we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is,” said CMS spokesman Joe Incandela.