CERN Scientists may have made the biggest scientific discovery of the century by capturing the elusive Higgs boson particle that gives matter mass and holds the physical fabric of the universe together.

CMS, one of the two Higgs-hunting experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, have said they saw a "bump" in their data corresponding to a particle weighing in at 125.3 gigaelectronvolts (GeV) - about 133 times heavier than the proton at the heart of every atom, BBC informs.

"They have discovered a particle consistent with the Higgs boson," Professor John Womersley. chief executive of the Science and technology Facilities Council, has told reporters, as cited by The Independent.

"Discovery is the important word. That is confirmed," he has pointed out.

"It's a momentous day for science."

The Higgs boson, sometimes referred to as the "God particle", has been the subject of a 45-year hunt to explain how matter attains its mass.

Once the new particle is confirmed, scientists will have to figure out whether the particle they see is the version of the Higgs predicted by the Standard Model or something else.

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