This stunning new time-lapse video reveals the making of a three-story mural, painted in tribute to scientists' quest to find the Higgs boson. The wildly colorful mural, completed in 2010, is the artist's fanciful depiction of what the hypothetical particle might look like.

"This project was inspired by the same questions that the physicists at CERN are trying to answer; where did we come from, what does it mean to be human, and what is our place in the universe," according to a statement on the Vimeo page of Josef Kristofoletti, the Austin, Texas-based artist who made the mural.

The incredible artwork was painted on the side of the ATLAS control room at CERN, on the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland. ATLAS is one of two main experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, where physicists have been searching for the Higgs boson. The discovery of the theoretical particle, which is essential to what physicists call the Standard Model, is expected to be announced next week.

Kristofoletti met with several physicists at CERN, learning about their work to inform his massive art project. The beats for the time-lapse video are provided by Berlin duo Modeselektor; Brian Eno's ambient music also served as a major inspiration.

"I listened to Another Green World while working on most of this project," Kristofoletti said in an e-mail exchange with Wired. "It was somehow the most futuristic music I could find."