The particle's over

14.03.15: THE PARTICLE on which our universe is built has been discovered at a Geneva atom research centre.

Physicists call it the 'god particle' because, without it, nothing would have substance.

The existence of the 'Higgs particle' was predicted more than 40 years ago by Peter Higgs (right) of Edinburgh University. Physicists are unanimous in the belief that he would have received the Nobel prize had he still been alive.

In fact, there is not one Higgs particle but a whole family of them. They crowd space, impeding the motion of quarks and leptons, which are the building blocks of all matter, and thereby endowing them with 'mass'. MC