Scenes from a celebration: The Higgs within reach

Celebrating the moment: Peter Higgs congratulated by Francois Englert, from the Free University of Brussels, as researchers gathered at CERN on July 4, 2012, to hear the results of experiments in the pursuit of the long-sought Higgs boson.

Scientists now believe there are strong indications pointing to the existence of a new particle, which could be the Higgs.

More data will be needed before researchers can be certain that the particle they've discovered is the elusive Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model. That's the theory that describes how all particles interact.

Though the results are preliminary, CERN's scientists believe the discovery likely heralds a new era in physics.