After 40 years of searching, physicists have the elusive Higgs boson in their sights. Wade Fisher, Michigan State University assistant professor of physics, presented the team’s results today at a physics conference in La Thuile, Italy.

The Higgs boson is a hypothetical particle thought responsible for giving mass to matter, a critical but still unproven component of the long-standing Standard Model of particle physics.

If a Higgs boson is created in a high-energy particle collision, it immediately decays into lighter more stable particles before even the world’s best detectors and fastest computers can snap a picture of it. So to find one, physicists retraced the path of these secondary particles and ruled out processes that mimic its signal.

“We see a distinct Higgs-like signature that cannot be easily explained without the presence of something new,” Fisher said.

CDF is an international experiment of 430 physicists from 58 institutions in 15 countries. DZero is an international experiment conducted by 446 physicists from 82 institutions in 18 countries. Funding for both experiments come from DOE’s Office of Science, the National Science Foundation and a number of international funding agencies.