Scientists are quivering with anticipation - flying halfway around the world for a close-up view of the action and devouring the latest updates from the blogosphere the way some girls track the doings of Justin Bieber.

Careers hang in the balance. Not to mention a cache of chocolate handed out by the folks who award Nobel Prizes.

All the fuss is over an elusive subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, which is key to understanding mass in the universe. No one has ever presented proof of its existence, but that may be about to change.

"There will be people who will see years of work and things for which they got tenure consigned to the dustbin of history," said MIT theoretical physicist and Frank Wilczek, who believes that the that particle's days of anonymity are numbered.

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