The boundaries of knowledge in particle physics look set to be broken soon with scientists around the globe locked in a multi-billion-dollar race to solve two great mysteries.

Scientists hope the world's most powerful atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, will unlock the secrets of the elusive 'God Particle' when switched on later this year.


Their quest: find the secrets of dark matter and the 'God particle' - a sub-atomic particle that is fundamental to understanding the nature of matter, but so elusive that, physicists quip, it can only be compared to divinity.

Last week, an international consortium stepped up the pace by announcing in Beijing, China, a design for the world's most expensive atom smasher - the US$6.7 billion (AU$8.6 billion) International Linear Collider (ILC).

In a double tunnel 31 kilometres long, particle physicists would collide electrons and their antimatter opposites, positrons, at energies of 500 billion electron volts.

The scheme - which could be extended to 50 kilometres and a trillion electron volts - will hurl these particles at close to the speed of light.