Officials at the world’s biggest particle physics lab at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research – Cern – are playing down claims of a major discovery after a leaked internal memo sparked excitement among science enthusiasts that the elusive Higgs-boson “God particle” has been found.

A spokesman for Cern, said the observation by scientists working at the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider “is probably nothing”.

Cern is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At Cern, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter – the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of nature.

The instruments used at Cern are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.