The mass of the W boson particle has been found by the Large Hadron Collider to be exactly what the Standard Model of particle physics predicts it to be, contradicting earlier results from Fermilab that hinted at a different mass and, therefore, the potential for new physics.
While the discovery further cements the Standard Model as our best depiction of the particle world, scientists had been hoping that their model was actually wrong, and that the discrepancy in the mass of the W boson could point the way to new theories that might explain puzzles such as the identity of dark matter, which accounts for 85% of all the matter in the universe yet remains effectively invisible to us.
