Tevatron may beat 'big bang machine' in finding elusive 'God Particle'

London, Feb 17 (ANI): The delay in re-starting the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) by CERN may eventually lead to Fermilab's Tevatron accelerator finding the elusive 'Higgs Boson', or, 'God Particle', first.

While the Tevatron accelerator is at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, its rival LHC is located beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Siwtzerland.

According to a report by BBC News, Fermilab says that the odds of their Tevatron accelerator finding the 'Higgs Boson first are now 50-50 at worst, and up to 96 percent at best.

Surprisingly, even CERN's Lyn Evans has admitted that the accident, which will halt the 7 billion dollars LHC until September this year, may cost them one of the biggest prizes in physics.

The two rivals are trying to identify the "God Particle" - one of the fundamental particles of matter.

Finding the Higgs boson, whose existence has been predicted by theoretical physicists, might help to explain why matter has mass.

Identifying the particle has been a target for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) ever since the LHC was first conceived in the early 1980s.

At the launch of the LHC near Geneva in September, some scientists predicted the Higgs would be revealed as soon as summer 2009.

But, just one week later, an accident occurred which will halt experiments at the accelerator for at least 12 months.

Fermilab has taken advantage, cranking up the intensity of research at their Tevatron accelerator in Illinois.

According to Dr Dmitri Denisov, of the Fermilab, "We now have a very, very good chance that we will see hints of the Higgs before the LHC will. I think we have the next two years to find it, based on the start date Lyn Evans has told us," he added.

"The probability of our discovering the Higgs is very good - 90 percent if it is in the high mass range. And the chances are even higher - 96 percent - if its mass is around 170GV," said Denisov. "In that case, we would be talking about seeing hints of the Higgs by this summer," he added.

"We are increasing data set very quickly. And they (CERN) are feeling the heat. It's a race. Whoever is first is first," he further added.

Fermilab estimates that the Tevatron has already picked out about eight collision events, which may be hints of the Higgs.

But until the number crunching is done, it is not possible to distinguish these from "background noise". (ANI)