Vanderbilt scientists are part of an international group whose experiments this year could make or break decades of study. Experts in Nashville say the results could cement long-held theories of physics, or turn much of the discipline on its head.

What gives objects mass? Scientific models struggle to explain it. One theory uses something called the Higgs field – a kind of background layer running through everything, even empty space. If that idea is right, researchers at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe think this year they’ll be able to find proof – unless they don’t.

“A lot of us would be excited if it wasn’t found.”

Vanderbilt Physicist Paul Sheldon.

“The public relations wouldn’t be so good; we’d get these stories about ‘5 thousand physicists spend billions of dollars and don’t find the Higgs,’ but the fact of the matter is scientifically, from an intellectual point of view it opens up a huge question, and huge issues that we really need to understand.”

If the Higgs theory doesn’t hold up, Vanderbilt’s Thomas Weiler says scientists may have to rethink their whole approach.

“From the financial point of view, the morale point of view, the experimental point of view, if nothing was found I think that would be the end of particle colliders. These machines are too expensive to find nothing.”

And Weiler points to another experiment that could prove pivotal this year: Researchers in Europe may have found a particle slightly faster than light. If so, it would overturn a century-old theory and open up worlds of seeming impossibilities, including time travel. Weiler says colleagues in the U.S. will do their own experiment this year to compare results.