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Today, both teams at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) delivered an update on their search for the Higgs boson “God” particle, the quantum unit that gives mass to everything else in the universe.

The ATLAS detector team has not discovered the Higgs boson — but a statistical bump at 126 GeV strongly suggests (95% certainty) that something new and exciting will be found there. The team leader, Fabiola Gianotti, says that we should have something conclusive — either for or against the existence of the God particle — in 2012.

The CMS detector team hasn’t found anything solid either, but there’s a large number of unexplained “events” in the low mass region (which correlates with ATLAS’s findings). There is a very strong hint that the Higgs boson (or another new particle) will be found at 126 GeV or lower. The CMS spokesman, Guido Tonelli, also expects a conclusion to be found in 2012.

No idea what what a Higgs boson is? Read our explainer. More importantly, though, read what will happen to science if the Higgs boson isn’t found next year.

This post has been updated multiple times