During a conference in Geneva on the 4^th of July 2012, the CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, announced that it had "observed" a new particle that could be the Higgs boson. Assiduously sought by the CERN physicists, this particle, sometimes known as "the God particle" is the "missing element in the standard model of particle physics" according to the organisation's Internet site. If this "observation" is confirmed, it will constitute one of the most important scientific discoveries of the start of this century.

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research

The European Council for Nuclear Research, installed on the Franco-Swiss border, was officially created in 1954, in Switzerland, after an idea of Louis de Broglie, the French winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics. Already, in 1949, he had proposed the creation of a European scientific laboratory during the European Conference on Culture in Lausanne. Five years later, twelve countries, including Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy, ratified the CERN convention. Since then, the structure has been renamed as the European Organisation for Nuclear Research but kept its acronym. It now has twenty Member States.