Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider could be getting an early Christmas present: the Higgs boson. According to the latest rumors, scientists at the LHC are seeing a signal that could correspond to a Higgs particle with a mass of 125 GeV (a proton is slightly less than 1 GeV).

Public talks are scheduled to discuss the latest results from ATLAS and CMS, two of the main LHC experiments, on Dec. 13. This follows one day after a closed-door CERN council meeting where officials will get a short preview of the findings, whatever they may be.

"Chances are high (but not strictly 100%) that the talks will either announce a (de facto or de iure) discovery or some far-reaching exclusion that will be really qualitative and unexpected," wrote theoretical physicist Lubos Motl on his blog.

Motl also mentioned that an internal email sent to the CERN community suggests that results on the elusive Higgs – which is required under the Standard Model of particle physics to provide mass to different particles – will be inconclusive. This could mean that the finding is below the five-sigma threshold needed to definitively declare a discovery in physics.

But if the rumors are true, and the Higgs has been seen at 125 GeV, it could bolster the idea that there is physics beyond the Standard Model that describes the behavior of subatomic particles. A 125 GeV Higgs is lighter than predicted under the simplest models and would likely require more complex theories, such as supersymmetry, which posits the existence of a heavier partner to all known particles.

Image: Claudia Marcelloni/CERN