Well, they found... something. Scientists in Geneva announced the discovery of a new subatomic particle that might be the elusive Higgs boson, the basic building block of the universe.

Scientist Joe Incandela described the finding from the CERN research centre near Geneva.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) JOE INCANDELA SCIENTISTS:

"So keep that in mind, this is a very very preliminary result, but we think it's very strong and very solid. Otherwise we wouldn't present it."

The Higgs particle has been described as the missing link that explains how particles clumped together to form stars, planets and even life.

Scientists used this, the Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest particle accelerator, to smash atoms together at the speed of light.

The energy produced from the collisions led them to Higgs.

The Higgs is the last undiscovered piece of the Standard Model theory-- which is to physicists what the theory of evolution is to biologists.

Julie Noce, Reuters