In retrospect, it seems remarkable that a handful of subatomic particles spinning round beneath the Franco-Swiss border should solicit such varied responses.

Around the world, some greeted the launch of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) with bated breath, expecting a cataclysmic end of the world as a black hole opened and swallowed the planet. Others welcomed the start of a new era in physics, as the far-distant beginnings of the universe were brought tantalisingly close.

But for Professor Peter Higgs, the morning of 10 September brought another day in the office – though certainly not a normal one.

The former University of Edinburgh physics professor, now retired at 79, was back in the Roxburghe Street study where, 40 years ago, he devised the theory suggesting the existence of the sub-atomic particle that bears his name – the Higgs-boson.

The particles, whose existence will be verified by experiments carried out at the LHC in the coming weeks, are considered amongst the most fundamental components of matter, believed to be the source of mass in the universe.

Should it be “discovered” by the £5 billion European-built supercollider, the Higgs-boson particle is widely expected to yield a Nobel Prize in Physics for its namesake.

While it recognises the culmination of his work, the attention Professor Higgs has recieved in recent weeks is in marked contrast to his typically modest and media-shy persona. Speaking to the BBC’s Reporting Scotland programme, the physicist expressed his bewilderment at being thrust into the limelight.

“The theories on which this work is based were written over the period of a few weeks in July 1964. Not much of a life’s work, is it?”

Professor Higgs marked the switch-on of the LHC with a host of dignitaries and fellow academics, before meeting the Scottish Education Secretary, Fiona Hyslop MSP, and the Scottish government’s chief science advisor, Professor Anne Glover, at a private briefing at Holyrood.

Also in attendence were Professors Richard Kenway, Head of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh, Kenway Smith, of the University of Glasgow, from the ATLAS experiment being conducted at the LHC, and Peter Clarke, Head of the University of Edinburgh's Institute for e-Science, also of the LHC.

But the University of Edinburgh interest in the race for the truths yielded by particle physics isn’t limited to the LHC alone.

In marked contrast to the multi-billion pound sophistication of the CERN laboratory, a team comprised of researchers from Edinburgh, Imperial College London and partner institutions in Portugal and Russia are labouring towards a similar goal in a working potash and salt mine, deep beneath Cleveland in England’s north east.

With a relatively tiny budget of £2 million, the Zeplin-3 project at Boulby mine hopes to use the shielding effect of a kilometre of rock to discover so-called "dark matter" up to a year before the LHC.

“It’s a very different world down here,” Boulby researcher Sean Paling told The Observer. "You have to put on mining gear, fulfil careful safety requirements and take great care not to get lost in all the different galleries. It’s not like that in Geneva.”

The differences between the rival laboratories isn’t merely in budget or location, but in philosophy. Whereas the LHC will use immense forces to recreate the conditions immediately following the big bang, the Zeplin-3 scientists are applying the simple virtue of patience.

Using sophisticated detecting equipment and a Xenon gas-filled canister no larger than a wardrobe, the Boulby project hopes to observe random collisions between particles of dark matter—filtered though the rock above the mine chamber—and atoms of gas.

“We have been astounded how well Zeplin-3 has performed during trials,” says project scientist Alexander Murphy.

“We are now going to carry out upgrades and will then run the machine for several months. With a bit of luck, we could pinpoint dark matter in a year.”