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A sub-atomic particle, known as the "God particle" will be revealed when the giant particle collider at the CERN research center on the border of France and Switzerland goes into full operation next year, says physicist Peter Higgs.
The physicist who first theorised the existence of the "God particle" says it is about to be revealed. Photo: ATLAS detector. Credit: Sindre Skrede
The world's most powerful detector, called ATLAS, will identify trace particles called muons expected to be produced during the operation of CERN's particle collider (Large Hadron Collider) or LHC.
Higgs first postulated the existence of the "God particle" named the Higgs boson in 1964 though its existence has yet to be proved.
"The likelihood is that the particle will show up pretty quickly ... I'm more than 90 percent certain that it will," said Higgs to reporters following his trip to CERN.
Asked if he would celebrate the discovery he told AFP: "I shall open a bottle of something. It will be champagne -- whisky takes a little more time to drink."
Higgs' early sixties work showed how a force, believed to have begun only milliseconds after the Big Bang, exists which would explain what gives mass to the universe, making life possible.
In experiments at CERN's particle collider, conditions would be recreated as existed at the Big Bang, smashing particles at light speed and hopefully revealing to scientists some of the mysteries of the universe's beginnings.
CERN though is not the only particle collider in the hunt for the elusive "God particle".
Researchers at the Fermilab in Chicago are using the Tevatron accelerator, to also recreate the same conditions for the early life of the universe. However Higgs believes both the lab's detection and data processing capabilities are near obsolete.
"It's hard for them to find it but it could be already in their data but not in their analysis yet," Higgs said.
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