The Discoverey of the Higgs Boson.

Yesterday (4/7/12) scientists at European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland confirmed what had been rumoured for weeks - they had discovered the strongest evidence yet of the existence of the Higgs boson particle.

I can't even pretend to understand this enough to explain it. However I gather that in 1916 Albert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity that proposed that energy could be converted into mass (E=MC^2). In the 1960's Sheldon Glashow and others including Peter Higgs produced the Standard Model of Particle Physics that proposed that energy changes into mass because it collides with small sub-atomic particles - such as the Hoggs boson - which make up something called the quantum field. Yesterday's discovery proves the existence of the Higgs boson thus proving both the General Theory of Relativity and the Standard Model of Particle Physics. In practical terms this actually means very little because most people had already accepted the Standard Model without the evidence and used it in their work. However it is probably one of the most important discoveries in the field of physics since the 1960's.