The summer’s big scientific news was the discovery of the “god particle” – the Higgs boson, at Cern, the European nuclear physics centre near Geneva. But Higgs has needed back-up, because it explains how matter acquires mass but not how gravity pulls matter together.

Now it may have a partner, nicknamed the Wang particle, which could help explain gravity. Charles Wang, an astrophysicist at Aberdeen university, outlined the theory behind the proposed particle at the British Science Festival on Tuesday. He developed the idea with colleagues at Strathclyde university and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK and the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal.

Experiments to investigate the proposed “scalar gravitational particle”, to give it its more formal name, will begin in November or December at Cern.