Just in time for Albert Einstein 's birthday Thursday , scientists delivered exciting news about how the universe works . Last summer , physicists announced that they had identified a particle with characteristics of the elusive Higgs boson , the so-called `` God particle . '' But , as often the case in science , they needed to do more research to be more certain . On Thursday , scientists announced that the particle , detected at the Large Hadron Collider , the world 's most powerful particle-smasher , looks even more like the Higgs boson . The news came at the Moriond Conference in La Thuile , Italy , from scientists at the Large Hadron Collider 's ATLAS and Compact Muon Solenoid experiments . These two detectors are looking for unusual particles that slip into existence when subatomic particles crash into one another at high energies . `` The preliminary results with the full 2012 data set are magnificent and to me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is , '' Joe Incandela , spokesperson for the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment , said in a statement . Scientists have analyzed two and a half times more data than they had when the first announced the Higgs boson results last July 4 . The Higgs boson is associated with the reason that everything in the universe -- from humans to planets to galaxies -- have mass . The particle is a component of something called the Higgs field , which permeates our universe . It 's not a perfect analogy , but Brian Greene , theoretical physicist at Columbia University and `` NOVA '' host , offered this comparison when I spoke with him last year : . `` You can think of it as a kind of molasses-like bath that 's invisible , but yet we 're all immersed within it , '' Greene said . `` And as particles like electrons try to move through the molasses-like bath , they experience a resistance . And that resistance is what we , in our big everyday world , think of as the mass of the electron . '' The electron would have no mass if it were not for this `` substance , '' the field made of Higgs particles . So , without the Higgs boson , we would not be here at all . How particle smasher and telescopes relate . Many physicists hate the term `` God particle '' because it did not originate in the way you might think . Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman wrote a book with `` God Particle '' in the title , but reportedly said he 'd actually wanted to call it the `` Goddamn Particle . '' Having evidence that the Higgs boson really exists is important for the current understanding of how the universe works . An amazing fact about the Higgs boson is that scientists predicted its existence and then detected it ( or something that strongly resembles it ) , rather than the other way around . They did n't see an abnormality and wonder what it was . The particle confirms notions about the universe that had only been calculated , but not directly observed . But scientists do not know if the particle they 've found is truly the one predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics . That model is the best explanation out there for what happens at scales smaller than the atom , but still has a lot of holes in it , and there are other theories out there that go beyond that model . It is possible that the Higgs boson found at the Large Hadron Collider could fit into those other theories . To figure that out , scientists must look at how fast the boson decays into other particles , and see how the decay rate stacks up against predictions . The Large Hadron Collider is located in a 17-mile tunnel near the French-Swiss border , and is operated by CERN , the European Organization of Nuclear Research . The $ 10 billion particle-smasher set a record in 2012 for the amount of energy achieved in particle collisions : 8 trillion electron volts ( TeV ) . The LHC shut down last month for a long staycation full of maintenance and upgrades . After about two years , it will come back online with 13 TeV . Detecting the Higgs boson takes a lot of particle collisions -- there 's only one observed event in every trillion proton-proton collisions , CERN said . The Higgs boson news coincides not only with Einstein 's birthday , but also with Pi Day , March 14 . These events are not entirely unrelated : Incandela told CNN last year that the number pi comes up in Large Hadron Collider calculations . For instance , scientists need to use pi when calculating how `` loops '' -- particles that transform themselves into other particles , and then come back together to make the original particle again -- contribute to a particle 's mass . More space and science news from CNN Light Years .
An elusive particle discovered about 2 years looks even more like the Hadron Collider boson . Greene is linked to all mass in the universe . Large Higgs , which discovered particle , shut down for last year . The particle-smasher will come back online at unprecedented energies .