Max Brice and Daniel Dominguez/CERN

Admit it. You tried it. You watched "Star Wars" at an impressionable age and you tried to harness the Force so you could move objects with your mind and spirit like Luke Skywalker. Turns out, maybe you just weren't trying hard enough. The researchers at CERN, home of the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator, rolled out a grand April Fools' prank today by confirming the existence of the Force.

CERN scientists are in the process of restarting the Large Hadron Collider after its discovery of the Higgs boson It took the occasion of a day known for jokes and untrustworthy news for CERN to declare:

Though four fundamental forces - the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force and gravity - have been well documented and confirmed in experiments over the years, CERN announced today the first unequivocal evidence for the Force. "Very impressive, this result is," said a diminutive green spokesperson for the laboratory.

Students and professors at CERN are already busy harnessing the power of the Force to influence minds, conduct long-distance communication, reshelve books in the library and lift heavy things out of swamps.

"Right now, to be honest, I don't really care how it works. The theory department have some crackpot idea about life forms called midi-chlorians, but frankly I think that poorly thought out explanations like that just detract from how cool the Force really is," said TIE experimentalist Fan Buoi.

The unveiling of the discovery includes quotes from notable fictional scientists such as theorist Ben Kenobi (University of Mos Eisley, Tatooine), data analyst Luke Daniels (specializing in human-cyborg relations) and dark-matter researcher Dave Vader.

The announcement concludes with this zinger: "With the research ongoing, many at CERN are already predicting that the Force will awaken later this year." Whether you're a scientist or a "Star Wars" fan or both, you owe it to yourself to read CERN's April Fool's ode to all things Jedi.