NERD ALERT- Like a Rolling CERN

I'm taking artistic license on the title, so back up off me. CERN, a.k.a. the European Center for Nuclear Research, had its big reveal today on whether the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) had determined the existence, or non-existence, of the Higgs boson. And they revealed (drum roll please)... (dramatic pause to enhance excitement)... (pause/drumroll has gone on too long and now people are annoyed)... that they'd only found hints of the particle and would need another year of data to make any real determination! WOOO! The Higgs boson particle, and thus the excitement about it, is a little bit hard to explain, which is attempted with more success here, but it is essentially the smallest building block of the Higgs field which, according to the Standard Model, gives particles mass. This is disappointing for those hoping to know, either way, but there is, seemingly, a silver lining:

"Given the outstanding performance of the L.H.C. this year, we will not need to wait long for enough data and can look forward to resolving this puzzle in 2012.”

Over the last 20 years, suspicious bumps that might have been the Higgs have come and gone, and scientists cautioned that the same thing could happen again, but the fact that two rival teams using two different mammoth particle detectors had recorded similar results was considered to be good news. Physicists expect to have enough data to make the final call by the summer.

For those, like me, who geek out over this stuff, it only means that we've been thrown a cliff hanger that will bring us back in this summer. Kind of like the "Game of Thrones." That's good enough for me (at least CERN didn't pull a "The Killing"... people will probably be interested enough to come back for Higgs boson in the summer).