The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the agency leading the hunt for the long-missing Higgs boson, or “God particle,” may have accidentally scooped itself: A video of CERN spokesman Joe Incandela was posted to the CERN website on Tuesday, one day ahead of CERN’s scheduled announcement on the latest data from the Higgs search, UK news outlet The Telegraph discovered. The video was quickly taken down, but not before The Telegraph had the opportunity to capture it and transcribe it.
As Incandela says in the video:
We’ve observed a new particle. We have quite strong evidence that there’s something there. Its properties are still going to take us a little bit of time…
It could be ultimately seen that its properties are very consistent with the Standard Model Higgs, or it could be found out that its properties don’t exactly match the predictions for the Standard Model. And if that’s the case, then we have something really quite profound here. It could be a gateway, if you like, to the next phase of exploring the deepest fabric of the universe, which is pretty profound when you think about it.
CERN later told The Telegraph that the video was just one “of several videos they have made, one for each of the possible outcomes,” echoing the excuse made by Republican Senatorial candidate Richard Mourdock of Indiana after videos of him reacting to various potential rulings in the Supreme Court health care reform case surfaced online ahead of the actual decision.
