When you have waited nearly 50 years, what’s another hour? As predicted, Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh, UK, and François Englert of the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for developing the theory of how particles acquire mass. The announcement in Stockholm, Sweden, came after a short delay, perhaps because the Nobel committee was conducting its own Higgs hunt.

The boson boys: British physicist Peter Higgs (right) and Belgian Francois Englert won the Nobel prize for being able to provide an answer to the riddle -- why does matter have mass? Pics/AFP