Atom-Smasher Gears Up to Find 'God Particle'

March 24, 2008 -- In a vast circular underground tunnel below the French-Swiss border, the final pieces of a gigantic machine are being set in place for an extraordinary investigation into the infinitely small at CERN: Europe's atom-smashing laboratory.

If things go according to plan, the greatest experiment in the history of particle physics could unveil a sub-atomic component, the Higgs Boson, which is so tantalizing that it has been called "the God Particle."

The "Higgs," named after a British physicist, Peter Higgs, who first proposed it in 1964, would fill a gaping hole in the benchmark theory for understanding the physical cosmos.

Other work on the so-called Large Hadron Collider (LHC) could explain dark matter and dark energy -- strange phenomena that, stunned astrophysicists discovered a few years ago, account for 96 percent of the Universe.

It could shed clues on the mystery of how the universe came to be.

And it may determine whether, as some physicists believe, space-time holds dimensions other than our own.

"We are standing on the shoulders of giants. But we want to know better and we want to know more," said a leading CERN investigator, Juergen Schukraft.

A gamble costing six billion Swiss francs (almost $6 billion) that has harnessed the labors of more than 2,000 physicists from nearly three dozen countries, the LHC is the biggest, most powerful high-energy particle accelerator ever built.

"It's fantastic. It's like a baby, only it doesn't take nine months to be born, but 19 years," enthused Daniel Denegri, whose Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector is bidding to be first to snare the Higgs.

In July or possibly August, the LHC will start its work, initiating a cautious program of tests before cranking up to full intensity.

In October, CERN (officially called the European Organization for Nuclear Research), will invite heads of state and government to an official inauguration.

Beams of hydrogen protons will whizz around at near-light speed in opposite directions until, bent by powerful superconducting magnets, they will smash together in four bus-sized detector chambers, where they will be annihilated at temperatures hotter than the sun.

Swathed within the chambers are arrays of delicate sensors which will track the wreckage from the smash-up -- the shower of quarks, muons, pions and other exotically-named members of the sub-atomic bestiary.