When the world’s largest atom-smasher begins colliding particles in a few months time, there is just a chance that it might create a miniature black hole.

It would not destroy the Earth, as some alarmists would have it - but it would guarantee a Nobel prize for Professor Stephen Hawking, according to no less an authority than the great man himself.

As scientists make their final preparations to switch on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) tomorrow morning at the CERN particle physics laboratory near Geneva, the world’s best-known living physicist said there would be “no doubt” he would win a Nobel if it produces a black hole that confirms his theories.

The Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, however, is not expecting such a triumph. He calculates the chances of a black hole emerging from the LHC at less than one per cent. “If the LHC were to produce little black holes, I don’t think there’s any doubt I would get a Nobel prize, if they showed the properties I predict,” Professor Hawking told the Today programme. “However, I think the probability that the LHC has enough energy to create black holes is less than one per cent, so I’m not holding my breath.”

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It is far more likely, indeed, that the LHC will cause him to lose a long-standing bet with Professor Gordy Kane, of the Michigan University, over the existence of the Higgs boson. Professor Hawking is not convinced that the so-called “God particle”, which theory suggests gives matter its mass, actually exists, and in 2000 he backed his judgement by making a $100 (£50) wager with Professor Kane, who thinks it will soon be found.

Should the Higgs bosun exist, it is almost certain that the LHC will identify it. “The LHC will increase the energy at which we can study particle interactions, by a factor of four,” Professor Hawking said. “According to present thinking, this should be enough to discover the Higgs particle, the particle that gives mass to all the other particles.

“I think it will be much more exciting if we don’t find the Higgs. That will show something is wrong, and we need to think again. I have a bet of $100 that we won’t find the Higgs.”

The discovery of the Higgs boson would almost certainly win a Nobel prize for its proposers – Professor Peter Higgs, of the University of Edinburgh, and two lesser-known Belgian physicists, Francois Englert and Robert Brout.

Professor Hawking’s claim to a Nobel prize rests on a different piece of theoretical physics: his 1974 proposition that black holes can emit radiation, despite their overwhelming gravitational pull. Though the idea was initially greeted with widespread scepticism, the concept of “Hawking radiation” is now generally accepted, though as with the Higgs boson, there is no direct evidence that it exists.

The LHC, which has cost upwards of £3.5 billion to build, might create miniature black holes that decay into Hawking radiation, as the professor proposed. It is uncertain, however, whether the accelerator will generate the vast energy that would be required.

Should a black hole arise, however, it would present no threat, as the same mathematics that suggests their creation is possible also requires that they would immediately decay.

“If the collisions in the LHC produced a micro black hole, and this is unlikely, it would just evaporate away again, producing a characteristic pattern of particles,” Professor Hawking said. “Collisions at these and greater energies occur millions of times a day in the Earth’s atmosphere, and nothing terrible happens.”

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