英國著名物理學家彼得?希格斯4月7日表示很快將能證明讓宇宙具備質量和使生命成為可能的“力量”的存在性，此神奇力量就是所謂的“上帝粒子”。

British physicist Peter Higgs gestures during a press conference on the sideline of his visit to the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, April 7, 2008. Higgs said he expects proof will be found soon of an all-pervading force giving mass to the universe and making life possible - existence of which he predicted over 40 years ago. [Agencies]

British physicist Peter Higgs said on Monday it should soon be possible to prove the existence of a force which gives mass to the universe and makes life possible - as he first argued 40 years ago.

Higgs said he believes a particle named the "Higgs boson", which originates from the force, will be found when a vast particle collider at the CERN research centre on the Franco-Swiss border begins operating fully early next year.

"The likelihood is that the particle will show up pretty quickly ... I'm more than 90 percent certain that it will," Higgs told journalists.

The 78-year-old's original efforts in the early 1960s to explain why the force, dubbed the Higgs field, must exist were dismissed at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Today, the existence of the invisible field is widely accepted by scientists, who believe it came into being milliseconds after the Big Bang created the universe some 15 billion years ago.

Finding the Higgs boson would prove this theory right.

CERN's new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) aims to simulate conditions at the time of that primeval inferno by smashing particles together at near light-speed and so unlock many secrets of the universe.

Higgs was in Geneva to visit CERN for the first time in 13 years in advance of the launch.

Scientists at the centre hope the process will produce clear signs of the boson, dubbed the "God particle" by some, to the displeasure of Higgs, an atheist.

He came up with his theory to explain why mass disappears as matter is broken down to its smallest constituent parts - molecules, atoms and quarks.

The normally media-shy physicist, who has spent most of his career at Scotland's Edinburgh University, postulated that matter was weightless at the exact moment of the Big Bang and then much of it promptly gained mass.

（Agencies/China Daily）

Vocabulary:

Large Hadron Collider：大型強子對撞機。世界上最大的粒子加速器，是一個長為26.6公里的混凝土環形軌道，位于阿爾卑斯山法國和瑞士邊界地下175米處。

(英語點津Celene編輯)