LHC Particle Search 'Nearing', Says Physicist

The Large Hadron Collider could soon begin a search for new sub-atomic particles, a leading physicist says. If commissioning work goes well, the LHC could become sensitive enough to probe a hitherto unexplored domain in particle physics by the end of summer.

Among the first candidates for discovery are two boson particles that have been predicted to exist. The $10bn collider is being used to smash together proton beams to shed light on the nature of Universe. The machine has seen half a billion of these collisions since beams crossed for the first time in November 2009.

It is operated by Cern (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), based near Geneva. The machine itself is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel under the French-Swiss border.

"This is the first of a type of particle that we're going to use to try to give us a handle on anti-matter and why it behaves differently to normal matter," Tara Shears researcher of the University of Liverpool told BBC News.

"We're going to use matter and anti-matter versions of this particular particle to really probe our understanding of what's going on in a way that we haven't been able to with other experiments."