"We know everything about the Higgs boson except whether it exists," said Rolf Heuer, director general of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN).
"We can settle this Shakespearean question -- to be or not to be -- by the end of next year," he told journalists at a webcast press conference at CERN headquarters in Geneva. Researchers at the US Department of Energy`s Fermilab, meanwhile, also reported telltale signs of the elusive particle, heating up a longstanding rivalry between the two high-energy physics laboratories.
CERN and Fermilab have both reduced the range of mass within which the "God particle," as it is known, might be found to a fairly narrow, low-mass band.
"The search for the Higgs boson is entering its most exciting, final stage," Stefan Soldner-Rembold, spokesman for one of Fermilab`s two key experiments, said last week in a statement.
Higgs or no Higgs, the stakes are huge either way, and could easily earn a Nobel Prize for the scientists who can take credit for the breakthrough.
The long-postulated particle, first proposed in 1964, is the missing cornerstone of an otherwise well-tested theory, called the Standard Model, which explains how known sub-atomic elements in the universe interact.
Without the `God particle`, however, that whole edifice falls apart because the Standard Model fails to answer one fundamental question: why do most elementary particles have mass? British theoretical physicist Peter Higgs proposed a mechanism that would "save" the theory -- if the particle named for him truly exists.
"If you find the Boson Higgs, the Standard Model is complete. If you don`t find it, then the Model has a serious problem. Both outcomes are discoveries," Heuer said.