GENEVA (Reuters) - British physicist Peter Higgs said on Monday it should soon be possible to prove the existence of a force which gives mass to the universe and makes life possible -- as he first argued 40 years ago.

Higgs said he believes a particle named the "Higgs boson", which originates from the force, will be found when a vast particle collider at the CERN research centre on the Franco-Swiss border begins operating fully early next year.

"The likelihood is that the particle will show up pretty quickly ... I'm more than 90 percent certain that it will," Higgs told journalists.