Researchers from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project near Geneva said in just three months of experiments they had already detected all the particles at the heart of our current understanding of physics, the Standard Model.
Rolf Heuer, director-general of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) which runs the LHC, told the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Paris experiments were progressing faster than expected and entering a stage in which "new physics" would emerge.
This could include long-awaited proof of the existence of the Higgs Boson and the detection of dark matter, believed to make up about a quarter of the universe alongside an observable 5 percent and 70 percent consisting of invisible dark energy.
"This is a dark universe and I hope the LHC ... will shed the first light into this dark universe," Heuer told the international conference. "This will take time."
The LHC, a 27-km (17-mile) looped tunnel which creates mini-Big Bangs by smashing together particles, is currently colliding particles at around half its maximum energy level -- 7 million electron volts, or 7 TeV.
It plans to increase this to 14 TeV from 2013, coming closer to the conditions in which the universe was created 13.7 billion years ago.
"Whether the LHC will have discoveries by 2012, I don't know. I hope it might happen, but if it doesn't happen then it might be three or four years later," Heuer said.