KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) -- The "God Particle," you may have heard of it, and It could explain how the universe was created.

Scientists from around the world worked on the discovery, and some of that work was done on UT's campus.

Most of science started out as an idea, just as it says in the opening music to the popular CBS show "The Big Bang Theory."

The show itself is named after a theory that has been studied for decades. But, it's believed an invisible particle holds it all together, the Higgs Boson, or the so-called "God Particle."

Stefan Spanier is an Physicist and Associate Professor at the University of Tennessee. He said, "It hasn't been found since the time it was predicted, 1964."

Spanier is one of more than 2,000 scientists worldwide who worked to find the Higgs particle. "But finally we think we found something in the right place, and about the correct rate, and very suspiciously looking like it," he said.

Spanier has been teaching UT students to develop detectors for the $10-billion, massive, Hadron collider in Switzerland. It accelerates particles to the speed of light and smashes them together, to simulate to the big bang, or the beginning of the universe.

To share research with Spanier's international partners, he has a direct connection to Geneva in Knoxville. Dozens of computers and advanced technology allow them to share their results, "At the rate of about 300 books per second, in terms of information," Spanier said.

It's an exciting time for physicists, and Spanier compares it to Christopher Columbus discovering America, when sailing to India. "The hope is we stumbled not only on land, but on a completely new land," he said.

Now more evidence is needed to confirm the finding. It could be several years before researchers know for sure if they've discovered the Higgs particle.

At UT, Spanier and students are already working on advancements in their detectors.