Physicists close in on subatomic particle

GENEVA -- Physicists are closing in on an elusive subatomic particle that, if found, would confirm a long-held understanding about why matter has mass and how the universe's fundamental building blocks behave.

Few people outside physics can fully comprehend the search for the Higgs boson, first hypothesized 40 years ago. But proving that the "God particle" actually exists would be "a vindication of the equations we've been using all these years," said one Nobel laureate.

Scientists announced yesterday they had found hints but no definitive proof of the particle that is believed to be a basic component of the universe. They hope to determine by next year whether it exists.

It's hard to find, not because it is tiny, but because it is hard to create, said physicist Howard Gordon of Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton. He works with the ATLAS experiment, one of two independent teams looking for the Higgs boson at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva.

CERN runs the Large Hadron Collider under the Swiss-French border, a 17-mile tunnel in which high-energy beams of protons are sent crashing into each other at incredible speeds. A fraction of those collisions could produce the Higgs particle, assuming it exists.

Researchers said yesterday they had defined a range of likely masses for the Higgs.

CERN's director-general, Rolf Heuer, said, "The window for the Higgs mass gets smaller and smaller" as scientists learn more. "But be careful -- it's intriguing hints," he said. "We have not found it yet. We have not excluded it yet."

Frank Wilczek, a Nobel laureate and MIT physics professor, said finding the Higgs boson would tie up a loose end of the standard model of physics, which requires that a Higgs-like particle exist.