The Landscape That Shifted
The map of the universe was once simpler Scientists knew of three fundamental forces that shaped every atom, every star, every breath you take. Electromagnetism was understood. The particle that carried it, the photon, was known. But the particles that carried the weak force, the W and Z bosons, had never been seen. They were theoretical ghosts, necessary for the equations to balance, invisible to every experiment. That changed in 1983 at CERN, when those ghosts became real
Neutrinos were once thought to be massless These ghostly particles, trillions passing through your body every second, were believed to have no weight at all. Just over 25 years ago, that assumption collapsed. Neutrinos do have mass. The discovery was a game-changer, one that forced physicists to rewrite their textbooks.
Then came the Higgs boson in 2012 It was the masterstroke, the final piece of the standard model’s picture of reality. The Higgs boson is radically different from every other particle. It has no spin. It has no electric charge. It only has mass. This makes it unique, at least as far as we know.
The quantum field associated with the Higgs boson is present everywhere in the universe. This field gives all other particles their masses. Without it, electrons would be massless. Atoms would not exist as we know them. The size of atoms, the chemistry of life, the structure of matter itself all depend on this invisible field.
Yet for all its success, the standard model is incomplete. It says nothing about dark matter, the invisible substance that makes up most of the cosmos. It offers no deeper explanation for the masses of the particles it catalogues. It cannot account for why the universe contains matter at all after the big bang.
Mark Thomson read about CERN when he was 13. The book fascinated him, but also frustrated him. It lacked detail. More than 40 years later, Thomson is CERN’s director general. He takes charge just as the Large Hadron Collider shuts down for upgrades and as CERN decides where to place its next multibillion-pound bet.
The goal of this gamble is to answer big, lingering questions. Particle physics has not changed since Thomson was a boy. It is dazzling in its outline, but maddening in the details it cannot yet supply.
The LHC will shut down on 29 June at 6am. It will remain off for four years. During this time, CERN will replace about 1.2 kilometres of the 27-kilometre ring with advanced technology. When particles come around the collider, magnets bend them toward each other. By making the bunches of protons smaller and smaller, scientists create many more collisions. Everything concentrates in the same place. That is what these super-high-field magnets do.
The superconducting cable that powers these magnets is incredible. Installing it is a massive task. It is by far the biggest thing CERN has done in the last 20 years. At the same time, the big experimental collaborations, ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid, are upgrading their giant detectors. These are the biggest projects the experiments have done since building the detectors themselves.
The High-Luminosity LHC will produce an enormous number of Higgs bosons. This is necessary to measure key properties for the first time, such as how the Higgs boson interacts with itself.
Particle physicists have begun to look beyond the LHC. They are thinking about constructing an even more powerful collider, the Future Circular Collider. Thomson occasionally writes down his 10 big questions in particle physics. Half of them have something to do with the Higgs boson. Does the Higgs boson interact with dark matter? We know dark matter is there, but we do not know the answer. Why does the Higgs boson have the properties it does? Is the Higgs boson alone, or are there multiple Higgs bosons?
The only way to really start addressing those questions is to make a Higgs factory. This machine would produce many Higgs bosons in much cleaner environments. Scientists could then look at the properties of the Higgs boson. If they see deviations from expected properties, they might learn something about the unknown universe.
From what we know today, there is a grouping of interesting physics at the electroweak scale. This corresponds to energies that existed about a hundredth of a nanosecond after the big bang. At this time, elementary particles cease to be massless. The Higgs mechanism gives the W, Z, and Higgs bosons their mass. The top quark also has a similar mass. All other fundamental particles have much smaller masses, which is perhaps more surprising.
Last year, across Europe, each scientific community came together. They asked themselves what should be done next at CERN. There was a massive consensus that the FCC is by far the best machine to do the science. There is a huge gap in scientific sensitivity between this particular machine and the other things you could do. It is very unusual, even in a specific scientific community, to get such strong agreement. They are convinced it is the best machine to continue their exploration of the universe.
Game-changing discoveries come along every five to 10 years. Neutrino mass was one. The Higgs boson was another. The discovery of gravitational waves was one. The discovery of dark energy was one. You do not get these discoveries all the time, and you should not expect to.
We now understand the universe really well. But we also understand there are so many questions we do not understand but can start to answer. We know dark matter is out there. At some point, we will discover what it is. We do not know when, but we will discover it.
The particles that make up the universe have a very strange pattern of masses. It looks semi-random. We do not really understand whether there is something fundamental hidden in that pattern. But we know it has something to do with the Higgs boson. Thomson would really love to know why particles’ masses have that pattern.
We also do not know why there is any matter left in the universe after the big bang. In principle, the big bang produces matter and anti-matter. At some point, they come together and annihilate, producing energy. That is not what happened, because we observe matter in the universe. There are all these really big questions. At some point, we need answers to them.
The Higgs boson is one of a kind. It has no spin and no electric charge. It only has mass. This potentially connects it to several outstanding issues within the standard model. There are deep questions about its nature. Is it a fundamental particle? Is it unique? Are there other Higgs bosons?
The quantum field associated with the Higgs boson is present everywhere in the universe. This property gives all other particles their masses. Without the Higgs field, all known particles would be massless. The Higgs field determines many properties of the universe. It determines the mass of the electron. It determines the size of atoms.
When you look back at the really big discoveries, they do not happen all the time. You should not expect them to. We are now at a point where we understand the universe really well. But we also understand there are so many questions we do not understand. We can start to answer them.
We know dark matter is out there. At some point, we will discover what it is. We do not know when, but we will discover it.
The standard model describes the particles and forces that make up the visible universe with extraordinary precision. The discovery of the Higgs boson seemed to be the masterstroke that completed its picture of reality. But for all its success, the standard model says nothing about dark matter. It offers no deeper explanation for the masses of the particles it catalogues. It also cannot account for why the universe contains matter at all after the big bang.
The LHC will undergo major upgrades that will sharpen its search for rare phenomena. Thomson spoke to New Scientist reporter Alex Wilkins at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. He discussed what answers the LHC may still yield and why physicists are going all in on a 13 billion pound collider as its successor.
When Thomson first read about CERN, we had three main fundamental forces, plus gravity. We knew about electromagnetism. We knew about the photon. But we had never seen the W and Z bosons. Those were discovered at CERN in 1983. We also did not know that neutrinos had mass. Just over 25 years ago, we thought these particles were massless. Then came the Higgs boson in 2012.
The Higgs boson is radically different to any other particle we know. It has no spin and no electric charge. It only has mass. This potentially connects it to several outstanding issues within the standard model. It is one of a kind, at least as far as we know. It also has the very strange property that the quantum field associated with the Higgs boson is present everywhere in the universe. This property gives all other particles their masses. Without the Higgs field, all known particles would be massless. The Higgs field determines many properties of the universe, for example, the mass of the electron and, consequently, the size of atoms. There are also deep questions about the nature of the Higgs boson, such as whether it is a fundamental particle and is unique, or if there are other Higgs bosons.
We have definitely not found everything. If you take a look back at the really big, game-changing discoveries, they come along every five to 10 years. You do not get these game-changing discoveries all the time, and you should not expect to. We are now at a point in time where we understand the universe really well, but we also understand there are so many questions that we do not understand, but we can start to answer.
We know there is dark matter out there. At some point, we will discover what it is. We do not know when, but we will discover what it is.
We also know that the particles that make up the universe have a very strange pattern of masses. It looks semi-random, and we do not really understand whether there is something fundamental hidden in that pattern, but we know it has something to do with the Higgs boson. Thomson would really love to know why particles’ masses have that pattern.
We also do not know why there is any matter left in the universe after the big bang. In principle, in the big bang, you produce matter and anti-matter. At some point, they come together, and they annihilate and we get energy. That is not what happened because we observe matter in the universe. So, there are all these really big questions out there, and at some point, we need answers to them.
The LHC will soon be shutting down for the high-luminosity upgrade. In the summer, on 29 June at 6am, we will switch off the LHC for four years. We are replacing about 1.2 kilometres of the 27-kilometre ring with this very advanced technology. When the particles come around the collider, we bend them towards each other. If you make the bunches of protons smaller and smaller, you get many, many more collisions. You concentrate everything in the same place. That is what these super-high-field magnets are doing.
We have this incredible superconducting cable that powers these magnets. Installing this is a massive task. It is by far the biggest thing that CERN has done for the last 20 years. At the same time, the big experimental collaborations, ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid, which we sometimes call the general-purpose detectors, are upgrading their giant detectors. These are, again, the biggest projects that the experiments have done since building the detectors themselves.
The High-Luminosity LHC will produce an enormous number of Higgs bosons, which is necessary to measure, for the first time, key properties such as how it interacts with itself.
Particle physicists have now begun to look at the future beyond the LHC and to think about constructing an even more powerful collider, like the Future Circular Collider. Thomson occasionally writes down his 10 big questions in particle physics, and half of them have something to do with the Higgs boson. Does the Higgs boson interact with dark matter? We know it is there, but we do not know the answer to that question. Why does the Higgs boson have the properties that it does? Is the Higgs boson on its own, or are there multiple Higgs bosons?
The only way you can really start to address those questions is to make what we are calling a Higgs factory, producing many Higgs bosons in much cleaner environments, so we can then look at the properties of the Higgs boson. If we see deviations from the properties we expect, we might then learn something about the unknown universe.
From what we know today, there is a grouping of interesting physics at what we call the electroweak scale, which corresponds to energies that we think existed about a 100th of a nanosecond after the big bang. At this time, elementary particles cease to be massless. The Higgs mechanism gives the W, Z and Higgs bosons clustered around the electroweak scale their mass. The top quark also has a similar mass. However, all the other fundamental particles have much smaller masses, which is perhaps more surprising.
Last year, across Europe, each individual scientific community came together and asked themselves the question: what should we do next at CERN? There was a massive consensus that the FCC is by far the best machine to do the science. That is because there is a huge gap in scientific sensitivity between this particular machine and the other things you could do. It is very unusual, even in a specific scientific community, to get such strong agreement. So we are convinced it is the best machine to do the science that we feel we need to do to continue our exploration of the universe.
Will there ever be a particle accelerator big enough? Is FCC the end of the line? One
The standard model is the crown jewel of particle physics. It describes the particles and forces that make up the visible universe with extraordinary precision. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 seemed to be the masterstroke that completed its picture of reality. But for all its success, the standard model says nothing about dark matter. It offers no deeper explanation for the masses of the particles it catalogues. It also cannot account for why the universe contains matter at all after the big bang.
The LHC is set to undergo major upgrades that will sharpen its search for rare phenomena. Thomson spoke to New Scientist reporter Alex Wilkins at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. He discussed what answers the LHC may still yield. He discussed why its physicists are going all in on a 13 billion pound collider as its successor.
When Thomson first read about CERN, we had three main fundamental forces, plus gravity. We knew about electromagnetism and knew about the particle that conveyed it, the photon. But we had never seen the particles associated with the weak force, the W and Z bosons. Those were discovered at CERN in 1983. We also did not know that fundamental particles called neutrinos had mass. Just over 25 years ago, we thought these particles were massless. The real massive discovery was the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.
The Higgs boson is radically different to any other particle we know. It has no spin and no electric charge. It only has mass. This potentially connects it to several outstanding issues within the standard model of particle physics. It is one of a kind, at least as far as we know. It also has the very strange property that the quantum field associated with the Higgs boson is present everywhere in the universe. It is this property that gives all other particles their masses. Without the Higgs field, all known particles would be massless. Consequently, the Higgs field determines many properties of the universe, for example, the mass of the electron and, consequently, the size of atoms. There are also deep questions about the nature of the Higgs boson, such as whether it is a fundamental particle and is unique, or if there are other Higgs bosons.
We have definitely not found everything. If you take a look back at the really big, game-changing discoveries, like neutrino mass, the Higgs boson, the discovery of gravitational waves, the discovery of dark energy, these things come along every five to 10 years. You do not get these game-changing discoveries all the time, and you should not expect to. We are now at a point in time where we understand the universe really well, but we also understand there are so many questions that we do not understand, but we can start to answer.
We know there is dark matter out there. At some point, we will discover what it is. We do not know when, but we will discover what it is.
We also know that the particles that make up the universe have a very strange pattern of masses. It looks semi-random, and we do not really understand whether there is something fundamental hidden in that pattern, but we know it has something to do with the Higgs boson. Thomson would really love to know why particles’ masses have that pattern.
We also do not know why there is any matter left in the universe after the big bang. In principle, in the big bang, you produce matter and anti-matter. At some point, they come together, and they annihilate and we get energy. That is not what happened because we observe matter in the universe. So, there are all these really big questions out there, and at some point, we need answers to them.
The LHC will soon be shutting down for the high-luminosity upgrade. In the summer, on 29 June at 6am, we will switch off the LHC for four years. We are replacing about 1.2 kilometres of the 27-kilometre ring with this very advanced technology. When the particles come around the collider, we bend them towards each other. If you make the bunches of protons smaller and smaller, you get many, many more collisions. You concentrate everything in the same place. That is what these super-high-field magnets are doing.
We have this incredible superconducting cable that powers these magnets. Installing this is a massive task. It is by far the biggest thing that CERN has done for the last 20 years. At the same time, the big experimental collaborations, ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid, which we sometimes call the general-purpose detectors, are upgrading their giant detectors. These are, again, the biggest projects that the experiments have done since building the detectors themselves.
The High-Luminosity LHC will produce an enormous number of Higgs bosons, which is necessary to measure, for the first time, key properties such as how it interacts with itself.
Particle physicists have now begun to look at the future beyond the LHC and to think about constructing an even more powerful collider, like the Future Circular Collider. Thomson occasionally writes down his 10 big questions in particle physics, and half of them have something to do with the Higgs boson. Does the Higgs boson interact with dark matter? We know it is there, but we do not know the answer to that question. Why does the Higgs boson have the properties that it does? Is the Higgs boson on its own, or are there multiple Higgs bosons?
The only way you can really start to address those questions is to make what we are calling a Higgs factory, producing many Higgs bosons in much cleaner environments, so we can then look at the properties of the Higgs boson. If we see deviations from the properties we expect, we might then learn something about the unknown universe.
From what we know today, there is a grouping of interesting physics at what we call the electroweak scale, which corresponds to energies that we think existed about a 100th of a nanosecond after the big bang. At this time, elementary particles cease to be massless. The Higgs mechanism gives the W, Z and Higgs bosons clustered around the electroweak scale their mass. The top quark also has a similar mass. However, all the other fundamental particles have much smaller masses, which is perhaps more surprising.
Last year, across Europe, each individual scientific community came together and asked themselves the question: what should we do next at CERN? There was a massive consensus that the FCC is by far the best machine to do the science. That is because there is a huge gap in scientific sensitivity between this particular machine and the other things you could do. It is very unusual, even in a specific scientific community, to get such strong agreement. So we are convinced it is the best machine to do the science that we feel we need to do to continue our exploration of the universe.
Will there ever be a particle accelerator big enough? Is FCC the end of the line? One
The standard model is the field’s crown jewel. It describes the particles and forces that make up the visible universe with extraordinary precision. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 seemed to be the masterstroke that completed its picture of reality. But for all its success, the standard model says nothing about dark matter. It offers no deeper explanation for the masses of the particles it catalogues. It also cannot account for why the universe contains matter at all after the big bang.
The LHC is set to undergo major upgrades that will sharpen its search for rare phenomena. Thomson spoke to New Scientist reporter Alex Wilkins at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. He discussed what answers the LHC may still yield. He discussed why its physicists are going all in on a 13 billion pound collider as its successor.
When Thomson first read about CERN, we had three main fundamental forces, plus gravity. We knew about electromagnetism and knew about the particle that conveyed it, the photon. But we had never seen the particles associated with the weak force, the W and Z bosons. Those were discovered at CERN in 1983. We also did not know that fundamental particles called neutrinos had mass. Just over 25 years ago, we thought these particles were massless. The real massive discovery was the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.
The Higgs boson is radically different to any other particle we know. It has no spin and no electric charge. It only has mass. This potentially connects it to several outstanding issues within the standard model of particle physics. It is one of a kind, at least as far as we know. It also has the very strange property that the quantum field associated with the Higgs boson is present everywhere in the universe. It is this property that gives all other particles their masses. Without the Higgs field, all known particles would be massless. Consequently, the Higgs field determines many properties of the universe, for example, the mass of the electron and, consequently, the size of atoms. There are also deep questions about the nature of the Higgs boson, such as whether it is a fundamental particle and is unique, or if there are other Higgs bosons.
We have definitely not found everything. If you take a look back at the really big, game-changing discoveries, like neutrino mass, the Higgs boson, the discovery of gravitational waves, the discovery of dark energy, these things come along every five to 10 years. You do not get these game-changing discoveries all the time, and you should not expect to. We are now at a point in time where we understand the universe really well, but we also understand there are so many questions that we do not understand, but we can start to answer.
We know there is dark matter out there. At some point, we will discover what it is. We do not know when, but we will discover what it is.
We also know that the particles that make up the universe have a very strange pattern of masses. It looks semi-random, and we do not really understand whether there is something fundamental hidden in that pattern, but we know it has something to do with the Higgs boson. Thomson would really love to know why particles’ masses have that pattern.
We also do not know why there is any matter left in the universe after the big bang. In principle, in the big bang, you produce matter and anti-matter. At some point, they come together, and they annihilate and we get energy. That is not what happened because we observe matter in the universe. So, there are all these really big questions out there, and at some point, we need answers to them.
The LHC will soon be shutting down for the high-luminosity upgrade. In the summer, on 29 June at 6am, we will switch off the LHC for four years. We are replacing about 1.2 kilometres of the 27-kilometre ring with this very advanced technology. When the particles come around the collider, we bend them towards each other. If you make the bunches of protons smaller and smaller, you get many, many more collisions. You concentrate everything in the same place. That is what these super-high-field magnets are doing.
We have this incredible superconducting cable that powers these magnets. Installing this is a massive task. It is by far the biggest thing that CERN has done for the last 20 years. At the same time, the big experimental collaborations, ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid, which we sometimes call the general-purpose detectors, are upgrading their giant detectors. These are, again, the biggest projects that the experiments have done since building the detectors themselves.
The High-Luminosity LHC will produce an enormous number of Higgs bosons, which is necessary to measure, for the first time, key properties such as how it interacts with itself.
Particle physicists have now begun to look at the future beyond the LHC and to think about constructing an even more powerful collider, like the Future Circular Collider. Thomson occasionally writes down his 10 big questions in particle physics, and half of them have something to do with the Higgs boson. Does the Higgs boson interact with dark matter? We know it is there, but we do not know the answer to that question. Why does the Higgs boson have the properties that it does? Is the Higgs boson on its own, or are there multiple Higgs bosons?
The only way you can really start to address those questions is to make what we are calling a Higgs factory, producing many Higgs bosons in much cleaner environments, so we can then look at the properties of the Higgs boson. If we see deviations from the properties we expect, we might then learn something about the unknown universe.
From what we know today, there is a grouping of interesting physics at what we call the electroweak scale, which corresponds to energies that we think existed about a 100th of a nanosecond after the big bang. At this time, elementary particles cease to be massless. The Higgs mechanism gives the W, Z and Higgs bosons clustered around the electroweak scale their mass. The top quark also has a similar mass. However, all the other fundamental particles have much smaller masses, which is perhaps more surprising.
Last year, across Europe, each individual scientific community came together and asked themselves the question: what should we do next at CERN? There was a massive consensus that the FCC is by far the best machine to do the science. That is because there is a huge gap in scientific sensitivity between this particular machine and the other things you could do. It is very unusual, even in a specific scientific community, to get such strong agreement. So we are convinced it is the best machine to do the science that we feel we need to do to continue our exploration of the universe.
Will there ever be a particle accelerator big enough? Is FCC the end of the line? One
The standard model is the field’s crown jewel. It describes the particles and forces that make up the visible universe with extraordinary precision. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 seemed to be the masterstroke that completed its picture of reality. But for all its success, the standard model says nothing about dark matter. It offers no deeper explanation for the masses of the particles it catalogues. It also cannot account for why the universe contains matter at all after the big bang.
The LHC is set to undergo major upgrades that will sharpen its search for rare phenomena. Thomson spoke to New Scientist reporter Alex Wilkins at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. He discussed what answers the LHC may still yield. He discussed why its physicists are going all in on a 13 billion pound collider as its successor.
When Thomson first read about CERN, we had three main fundamental forces, plus gravity. We knew about electromagnetism and knew about the particle that conveyed it, the photon. But we had never seen the particles associated with the weak force, the W and Z bosons. Those were discovered at CERN in 1983. We also did not know that fundamental particles called neutrinos had mass. Just over 25 years ago, we thought these particles were massless. The real massive discovery was the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.
The Higgs boson is radically different to any other particle we know. It has no spin and no electric charge. It only has mass. This potentially connects it to several outstanding issues within the standard model of particle physics. It is one of a kind, at least as far as we know. It also has the very strange property that the quantum field associated with the Higgs boson is present everywhere in the universe. It is this property that gives all other particles their masses. Without the Higgs field, all known particles would be massless. Consequently, the Higgs field determines many properties of the universe, for example, the mass of the electron and, consequently, the size of atoms. There are also deep questions about the nature of the Higgs boson, such as whether it is a fundamental particle and is unique, or if there are other Higgs bosons.
We have definitely not found everything. If you take a look back at the really big, game-changing discoveries, like neutrino mass, the Higgs boson, the discovery of gravitational waves, the discovery of dark energy, these things come along every five to 10 years. You do not get these game-changing discoveries all the time, and you should not expect to. We are now at a point in time where we understand the universe really well, but we also understand there are so many questions that we do not understand, but we can start to answer.
We know there is dark matter out there. At some point, we will discover what it is. We do not know when, but we will discover what it is.
We also know that the particles that make up the universe have a very strange pattern of masses. It looks semi-random, and we do not really understand whether there is something fundamental hidden in that pattern, but we know it has something to do with the Higgs boson. Thomson would really love to know why particles’ masses have that pattern.
We also do not know why there is any matter left in the universe after the big bang. In principle, in the big bang, you produce matter and anti-matter. At some point, they come together, and they annihilate and we get energy. That is not what happened because we observe matter in the universe. So, there are all these really big questions out there, and at some point, we need answers to them.
The LHC will soon be shutting down for the high-luminosity upgrade. In the summer, on 29 June at 6am, we will switch off the LHC for four years. We are replacing about 1.2 kilometres of the 27-kilometre ring with this very advanced technology. When the particles come around the collider, we bend them towards each other. If you make the bunches of protons smaller and smaller, you get many, many more collisions. You concentrate everything in the same place. That is what these super-high-field magnets are doing.
We have this incredible superconducting cable that powers these magnets. Installing this is a massive task. It is by far the biggest thing that CERN has done for the last 20 years. At the same time, the big experimental collaborations, ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid, which we sometimes call the general-purpose detectors, are upgrading their giant detectors. These are, again, the biggest projects that the experiments have done since building the detectors themselves.
The High-Luminosity LHC will produce an enormous number of Higgs bosons, which is necessary to measure, for the first time, key properties such as how it interacts with itself.
Particle physicists have now begun to look at the future beyond the LHC and to think about constructing an even more powerful collider, like the Future Circular Collider. Thomson occasionally writes down his 10 big questions in particle physics, and half of them have something to do with the Higgs boson. Does the Higgs boson interact with dark matter? We know it is there, but we do not know the answer to that question. Why does the Higgs boson have the properties that it does? Is the Higgs boson on its own, or are there multiple Higgs bosons?
The only way you can really start to address those questions is to make what we are calling a Higgs factory, producing many Higgs bosons in much cleaner environments, so we can then look at the properties of the Higgs boson. If we see deviations from the properties we expect, we might then learn something about the unknown universe.
From what we know today, there is a grouping of interesting physics at what we call the electroweak scale, which corresponds to energies that we think existed about a 100th of a nanosecond after the big bang. At this time, elementary particles cease to be massless. The Higgs mechanism gives the W, Z and Higgs bosons clustered around the electroweak scale their mass. The top quark also has a similar mass. However, all the other fundamental particles have much smaller masses, which is perhaps more surprising.
Last year, across Europe, each individual scientific community came together and asked themselves the question: what should we do next at CERN? There was a massive consensus that the FCC is by far the best machine to do the science. That is because there is a huge gap in scientific sensitivity between this particular machine and the other things you could do. It is very unusual, even in a specific scientific community, to get such strong agreement. So we are convinced it is the best machine to do the science that we feel we need to do to continue our exploration of the universe.
Will there ever be a particle accelerator big enough? Is FCC the end of the line? One
The standard model is the field’s crown jewel. It describes the particles and forces that make up the visible universe with extraordinary precision. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 seemed to be the masterstroke that completed its picture of reality. But for all its success, the standard model says nothing about dark matter. It offers no deeper explanation for the masses of the particles it catalogues. It also cannot account for why the universe contains matter at all after the big bang.
The LHC is set to undergo major upgrades that will sharpen its search for rare phenomena. Thomson spoke to New Scientist reporter Alex Wilkins at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. He discussed what answers the LHC may still yield. He discussed why its physicists are going all in on a 13 billion pound collider as its successor.
When Thomson first read about CERN, we had three main fundamental forces, plus gravity. We knew about electromagnetism and knew about the particle that conveyed it, the photon. But we had never seen the particles associated with the weak force, the W and Z bosons. Those were discovered at CERN in 1983. We also did not know that fundamental particles called neutrinos had mass. Just over 25 years ago, we thought these particles were massless. The real massive discovery was the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.
The Higgs boson is radically different to any other particle we know. It has no spin and no electric charge. It only has mass. This potentially connects it to several outstanding issues within the standard model of particle physics. It is one of a kind, at least as far as we know. It also has the very strange property that the quantum field associated with the Higgs boson is present everywhere in the universe. It is this property that gives all other particles their masses. Without the Higgs field, all known particles would be massless. Consequently, the Higgs field determines many properties of the universe, for example, the mass of the electron and, consequently, the size of atoms. There are also deep questions about the nature of the Higgs boson, such as whether it is a fundamental particle and is unique, or if there are other Higgs bosons.
We have definitely not found everything. If you take a look back at the really big, game-changing discoveries, like neutrino mass, the Higgs boson, the discovery of gravitational waves, the discovery of dark energy, these things come along every five to 10 years. You do not get these game-changing discoveries all the time, and you should not expect to. We are now at a point in time where we understand the universe really well, but we also understand there are so many questions that we do not understand, but we can start to answer.
We know there is dark matter out there. At some point, we will discover what it is. We do not know when, but we will discover what it is.
We also know that the particles that make up the universe have a very strange pattern of masses. It looks semi-random, and we do not really understand whether there is something fundamental hidden in that pattern, but we know it has something to do with the Higgs boson. Thomson would really love to know why particles’ masses have that pattern.
We also do not know why there is any matter left in the universe after the big bang. In principle, in the big bang, you produce matter and anti-matter. At some point, they come together, and they annihilate and we get energy. That is not what happened because we observe matter in the universe. So, there are all these really big questions out there, and at some point, we need answers to them.
The LHC will soon be shutting down for the high-luminosity upgrade. In the summer, on 29 June at 6am, we will switch off the LHC for four years. We are replacing about 1.2 kilometres of the 27-kilometre ring with this very advanced technology. When the particles come around the collider, we bend them towards each other. If you make the bunches of protons smaller and smaller, you get many, many more collisions. You concentrate everything in the same place. That is what these super-high-field magnets are doing.
We have this incredible superconducting cable that powers these magnets. Installing this is a massive task. It is by far the biggest thing that CERN has done for the last 20 years. At the same time, the big experimental collaborations, ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid, which we sometimes call the general-purpose detectors, are upgrading their giant detectors. These are, again, the biggest projects that the experiments have done since building the detectors themselves.
The High-Luminosity LHC will produce an enormous number of Higgs bosons, which is necessary to measure, for the first time, key properties such as how it interacts with itself.
Particle physicists have now begun to look at the future beyond the LHC and to think about constructing an even more powerful collider, like the Future Circular Collider. Thomson occasionally writes down his 10 big questions in particle physics, and half of them have something to do with the Higgs boson. Does the Higgs boson interact with dark matter? We know it is there, but we do not know the answer to that question. Why does the Higgs boson have the properties that it does? Is the Higgs boson on its own, or are there multiple Higgs bosons?
The only way you can really start to address those questions is to make what we are calling a Higgs factory, producing many Higgs bosons in much cleaner environments, so we can then look at the properties of the Higgs boson. If we see deviations from the properties we expect, we might then learn something about the unknown universe.
From what we know today, there is a grouping of interesting physics at what we call the electroweak scale, which corresponds to energies that we think existed about a 100th of a nanosecond after the big bang. At this time, elementary particles cease to be massless. The Higgs mechanism gives the W, Z and Higgs bosons clustered around the electroweak scale their mass. The top quark also has a similar mass. However, all the other fundamental particles have much smaller masses, which is perhaps more surprising.
Last year, across Europe, each individual scientific community came together and asked themselves the question: what should we do next at CERN? There was a massive consensus that the FCC is by far the best machine to do the science. That is because there is a huge gap in scientific sensitivity between this particular machine and the other things you could do. It is very unusual, even in a specific scientific community, to get such strong agreement. So we are convinced it is the best machine to do the science that we feel we need to do to continue our exploration of the universe.
Will there ever be a particle accelerator big enough? Is FCC the end of the line? One
The standard model is the field’s crown jewel. It describes the particles and forces that make up the visible universe with extraordinary precision. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 seemed to be the masterstroke that completed its picture of reality. But for all its success, the standard model says nothing about dark matter. It offers no deeper explanation for the masses of the particles it catalogues. It also cannot account for why the universe contains matter at all after the big bang.
The LHC is set to undergo major upgrades that will sharpen its search for rare phenomena. Thomson spoke to New Scientist reporter Alex Wilkins at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. He discussed what answers the LHC may still yield. He discussed why its physicists are going all in on a 13 billion pound collider as its successor.
When Thomson first read about CERN, we had three main fundamental forces, plus gravity. We knew about electromagnetism and knew about the particle that conveyed it, the photon. But we had never seen the particles associated with the weak force, the W and Z bosons. Those were discovered at CERN in 1983. We also did not know that fundamental particles called neutrinos had mass. Just over 25 years ago, we thought these particles were massless. The real massive discovery was the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.
The Higgs boson is radically different to any other particle we know. It has no spin and no electric charge. It only has mass. This potentially connects it to several outstanding issues within the standard model of particle physics. It is one of a kind, at least as far as we know. It also has the very strange property that the quantum field associated with the Higgs boson is present everywhere in the universe. It is this property that gives all other particles their masses. Without the Higgs field, all known particles would be massless. Consequently, the Higgs field determines many properties of the universe, for example, the mass of the electron and, consequently, the size of atoms. There are also deep questions about the nature of the Higgs boson, such as whether it is a fundamental particle and is unique, or if there are other Higgs bosons.
We have definitely not found everything. If you take a look back at the really big, game-changing discoveries, like neutrino mass, the Higgs boson, the discovery of gravitational waves, the discovery of dark energy, these things come along every five to 10 years. You do not get these game-changing discoveries all the time, and you should not expect to. We are now at a point in time where we understand the universe really well, but we also understand there are so many questions that we do not understand, but we can start to answer.
We know there is dark matter out there. At some point, we will discover what it is. We do not know when, but we will discover what it is.
We also know that the particles that make up the universe have a very strange pattern of masses. It looks semi-random, and we do not really understand whether there is something fundamental hidden in that pattern, but we know it has something to do with the Higgs boson. Thomson would really love to know why particles’ masses have that pattern.
We also do not know why there is any matter left in the universe after the big bang. In principle, in the big bang, you produce matter and anti-matter. At some point, they come together, and they annihilate and we get energy. That is not what happened because we observe matter in the universe. So, there are all these really big questions out there, and at some point, we need answers to them.
The LHC will soon be shutting down for the high-luminosity upgrade. In the summer, on 29 June at 6am, we will switch off the LHC for four years. We are replacing about 1.2 kilometres of the 27-kilometre ring with this very advanced technology. When the particles come around the collider, we bend them towards each other. If you make the bunches of protons smaller and smaller, you get many, many more collisions. You concentrate everything in the same place. That is what these super-high-field magnets are doing.
We have this incredible superconducting cable that powers these magnets. Installing this is a massive task. It is by far the biggest thing that CERN has done for the last 20 years. At the same time, the big experimental collaborations, ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid, which we sometimes call the general-purpose detectors, are upgrading their giant detectors. These are, again, the biggest projects that the experiments have done since building the detectors themselves.
The High-Luminosity LHC will produce an enormous number of Higgs bosons, which is necessary to measure, for the first time, key properties such as how it interacts with itself.
Particle physicists have now begun to look at the future beyond the LHC and to think about constructing an even more powerful collider, like the Future Circular Collider. Thomson occasionally writes down his 10 big questions in particle physics, and half of them have something to do with the Higgs boson. Does the Higgs boson interact with dark matter? We know it is there, but we do not know the answer to that question. Why does the Higgs boson have the properties that it does? Is the Higgs boson on its own, or are there multiple Higgs bosons?
The only way you can really start to address those questions is to make what we are calling a Higgs factory, producing many Higgs bosons in much cleaner environments, so we can then look at the properties of the Higgs boson. If we see deviations from the properties we expect, we might then learn something about the unknown universe.
From what we know today, there is a grouping of interesting physics at what we call the electroweak scale, which corresponds to energies that we think existed about a 100th of a nanosecond after the big bang. At this time, elementary particles cease to be massless. The Higgs mechanism gives the W, Z and Higgs bosons clustered around the electroweak scale their mass. The top quark also has a similar mass. However, all the other fundamental particles have much smaller masses, which is perhaps more surprising.
Last year, across Europe, each individual scientific community came together and asked themselves the question: what should we do next at CERN? There was a massive consensus that the FCC is by far the best machine to do the science. That is because there is a huge gap in scientific sensitivity between this particular machine and the other things you could do. It is very unusual, even in a specific scientific community, to get such strong agreement. So we are convinced it is the best machine to do the science that we feel we need to do to continue our exploration of the universe.
Will there ever be a particle accelerator big enough? Is FCC the end of the line? One
The standard model is the field’s crown jewel. It describes the particles and forces that make up the visible universe with extraordinary precision. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 seemed to be the masterstroke that completed its picture of reality. But for all its success, the standard model says nothing about dark matter. It offers no deeper explanation for the masses of the particles it catalogues. It also cannot account for why the universe contains matter at all after the big bang.
The LHC is set to undergo major upgrades that will sharpen its search for rare phenomena. Thomson spoke to New Scientist reporter Alex Wilkins at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. He discussed what answers the LHC may still yield. He discussed why its physicists are going all in on a 13 billion pound collider as its successor.
When Thomson first read about CERN, we had three main fundamental forces, plus gravity. We knew about electromagnetism and knew about the particle that conveyed it, the photon. But we had never seen the particles associated with the weak force, the W and Z bosons. Those were discovered at CERN in 1983. We also did not know that fundamental particles called neutrinos had mass. Just over 25 years ago, we thought these particles were massless. The real massive discovery was the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.
The Higgs boson is radically different to any other particle we know. It has no spin and no electric charge. It only has mass. This potentially connects it to several outstanding issues within the standard model of particle physics. It is one of a kind, at least as far as we know. It also has the very strange property that the quantum field associated with the Higgs boson is present everywhere in the universe. It is this property that gives all other particles their masses. Without the Higgs field, all known particles would be massless. Consequently, the Higgs field determines many properties of the universe, for example, the mass of the electron and, consequently, the size of atoms. There are also deep questions about the nature of the Higgs boson, such as whether it is a fundamental particle and is unique, or if there are other Higgs bosons.
We have definitely not found everything. If you take a look back at the really big, game-changing discoveries, like neutrino mass, the Higgs boson, the discovery of gravitational waves, the discovery of dark energy, these things come along every five to 10 years. You do not get these game-changing discoveries all the time, and you should not expect to. We are now at a point in time where we understand the universe really well, but we also understand there are so many questions that we do not understand, but we can start to answer.
We know there is dark matter out there. At some point, we will discover what it is. We do not know when, but we will discover what it is.
We also know that the particles that make up the universe have a very strange pattern of masses. It looks semi-random, and we do not really understand whether there is something fundamental hidden in that pattern, but we know it has something to do with the Higgs boson. Thomson would really love to know why particles’ masses have that pattern.
We also do not know why there is any matter left in the universe after the big bang. In principle, in the big bang, you produce matter and anti-matter. At some point, they come together, and they annihilate and we get energy. That is not what happened because we observe matter in the universe. So, there are all these really big questions out there, and at some point, we need answers to them.
The LHC will soon be shutting down for the high-luminosity upgrade. In the summer, on 29 June at 6am, we will switch off the LHC for four years. We are replacing about 1.2 kilometres of the 27-kilometre ring with this very advanced technology. When the particles come around the collider, we bend them towards each other. If you make the bunches of protons smaller and smaller, you get many, many more collisions. You concentrate everything in the same place. That is what these super-high-field magnets are doing.
We have this incredible superconducting cable that powers these magnets. Installing this is a massive task. It is by far the biggest thing that CERN has done for the last 20 years. At the same time, the big experimental collaborations, ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid, which we sometimes call the general-purpose detectors, are upgrading their giant detectors. These are, again, the biggest projects that the experiments have done since building the detectors themselves.
The High-Luminosity LHC will produce an enormous number of Higgs bosons, which is necessary to measure, for the first time, key properties such as how it interacts with itself.
Particle physicists have now begun to look at the future beyond the LHC and to think about constructing an even more powerful collider, like the Future Circular Collider. Thomson occasionally writes down his 10 big questions in particle physics, and half of them have something to do with the Higgs boson. Does the Higgs boson interact with dark matter? We know it is there, but we do not know the answer to that question. Why does the Higgs boson have the properties that it does? Is the Higgs boson on its own, or are there multiple Higgs bosons?
The only way you can really start to address those questions is to make what we are calling a Higgs factory, producing many Higgs bosons in much cleaner environments, so we can then look at the properties of the Higgs boson. If we see deviations from the properties we expect, we might then learn something about the unknown universe.
From what we know today, there is a grouping of interesting physics at what we call the electroweak scale, which corresponds to energies that we think existed about a 100th of a nanosecond after the big bang. At this time, elementary particles cease to be massless. The Higgs mechanism gives the W, Z and Higgs bosons clustered around the electroweak scale their mass. The top quark also has a similar mass. However, all the other fundamental particles have much smaller masses, which is perhaps more surprising.
Last year, across Europe, each individual scientific community came together and asked themselves the question: what should we do next at CERN? There was a massive consensus that the FCC is by far the best machine to do the science. That is because there is a huge gap in scientific sensitivity between this particular machine and the other things you could do. It is very unusual, even in a specific scientific community, to get such strong agreement. So we are convinced it is the best machine to do the science that we feel we need to do to continue our exploration of the universe.
Will there ever be a particle accelerator big enough? Is FCC the end of the line? One
The standard model is the field’s crown jewel. It describes the particles and forces that make up the visible universe with extraordinary precision. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 seemed to be the masterstroke that completed its picture of reality. But for all its success, the standard model says nothing about dark matter. It offers no deeper explanation for the masses of the particles it catalogues. It also cannot account for why the universe contains matter at all after the big bang.
The LHC is set to undergo major upgrades that will sharpen its search for rare phenomena. Thomson spoke to New Scientist reporter Alex Wilkins at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. He discussed what answers the LHC may still yield. He discussed why its physicists are going all in on a 13 billion pound collider as its successor.
When Thomson first read about CERN, we had three main fundamental forces, plus gravity. We knew about electromagnetism and knew about the particle that conveyed it, the photon. But we had never seen the particles associated with the weak force, the W and Z bosons. Those were discovered at CERN in 1983. We also did not know that fundamental particles called neutrinos had mass. Just over 25 years ago, we thought these particles were massless. The real massive discovery was the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.
The Higgs boson is radically different to any other particle we know. It has no spin and no electric charge. It only has mass. This potentially connects it to several outstanding issues within the standard model of particle physics. It is one of a kind, at least as far as we know. It also has the very strange property that the quantum field associated with the Higgs boson is present everywhere in the universe. It is this property that gives all other particles their masses. Without the Higgs field, all known particles would be massless. Consequently, the Higgs field determines many properties of the universe, for example, the mass of the electron and, consequently, the size of atoms. There are also deep questions about the nature of the Higgs boson, such as whether it is a fundamental particle and is unique, or if there are other Higgs bosons.
We have definitely not found everything. If you take a look back at the really big, game-changing discoveries, like neutrino mass, the Higgs boson, the discovery of gravitational waves, the discovery of dark energy, these things come along every five to 10 years. You do not get these game-changing discoveries all the time, and you should not expect to. We are now at a point in time where we understand the universe really well, but we also understand there are so many questions that we do not understand, but we can start to answer.
We know there is dark matter out there. At some point, we will discover what it is. We do not know when, but we will discover what it is.
We also know that the particles that make up the universe have a very strange pattern of masses. It looks semi-random, and we do not really understand whether there is something fundamental hidden in that pattern, but we know it has something to do with the Higgs boson. Thomson would really love to know why particles’ masses have that pattern.
We also do not know why there is any matter left in the universe after the big bang. In principle, in the big bang, you produce matter and anti-matter. At some point, they come together, and they annihilate and we get energy. That is not what happened because we observe matter in the universe. So, there are all these really big questions out there, and at some point, we need answers to them.
The LHC will soon be shutting down for the high-luminosity upgrade. In the summer, on 29 June at 6am, we will switch off the LHC for four years. We are replacing about 1.2 kilometres of the 27-kilometre ring with this very advanced technology. When the particles come around the collider, we bend them towards each other. If you make the bunches of protons smaller and smaller, you get many, many more collisions. You concentrate everything in the same place. That is what these super-high-field magnets are doing.
We have this incredible superconducting cable that powers these magnets. Installing this is a massive task. It is by far the biggest thing that CERN has done for the last 20 years. At the same time, the big experimental collaborations, ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid, which we sometimes call the general-purpose detectors, are upgrading their giant detectors. These are, again, the biggest projects that the experiments have done since building the detectors themselves.
The High-Luminosity LHC will produce an enormous number of Higgs bosons, which is necessary to measure, for the first time, key properties such as how it interacts with itself.
Particle physicists have now begun to look at the future beyond the LHC and to think about constructing an even more powerful collider, like the Future Circular Collider. Thomson occasionally writes down his 10 big questions in particle physics, and half of them have something to do with the Higgs boson. Does the Higgs boson interact with dark matter? We know it is there, but we do not know the answer to that question. Why does the Higgs boson have the properties that it does? Is the Higgs boson on its own, or are there multiple Higgs bosons?
The only way you can really start to address those questions is to make what we are calling a Higgs factory, producing many Higgs bosons in much cleaner environments, so we can then look at the properties of the Higgs boson. If we see deviations from the properties we expect, we might then learn something about the unknown universe.
From what we know today, there is a grouping of interesting physics at what we call the electroweak scale, which corresponds to energies that we think existed about a 100th of a nanosecond after the big bang. At this time, elementary particles cease to be massless. The Higgs mechanism gives the W, Z and Higgs bosons clustered around the electroweak scale their mass. The top quark also has a similar mass. However, all the other fundamental particles have much smaller masses, which is perhaps more surprising.
Last year, across Europe, each individual scientific community came together and asked themselves the question: what should we do next at CERN? There was a massive consensus that the FCC is by far the best machine to do the science. That is because there is a huge gap in scientific sensitivity between this particular machine and the other things you could do. It is very unusual, even in a specific scientific community, to get such strong agreement. So we are convinced it is the best machine to do the science that we feel we need to do to continue our exploration of the universe.
Will there ever be a particle accelerator big enough? Is FCC the end of the line? One
The standard model is the field’s crown jewel. It describes the particles and forces that make up the visible universe with extraordinary precision. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 seemed to be the masterstroke that completed its picture of reality. But for all its success, the standard model says nothing about dark matter. It offers no deeper explanation for the masses of the particles it catalogues. It also cannot account for why the universe contains matter at all after the big bang.
The LHC is set to undergo major upgrades that will sharpen its search for rare phenomena. Thomson spoke to New Scientist reporter Alex Wilkins at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. He discussed what answers the LHC may still yield. He discussed why its physicists are going all in on a 13 billion pound collider as its successor.
When Thomson first read about CERN, we had three main fundamental forces, plus gravity. We knew about electromagnetism and knew about the particle that conveyed it, the photon. But we had never seen the particles associated with the weak force, the W and Z bosons. Those were discovered at CERN in 1983. We also did not know that fundamental particles called neutrinos had mass. Just over 25 years ago, we thought these particles were massless. The real massive discovery was the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.
The Higgs boson is radically different to any other particle we know. It has no spin and no electric charge. It only has mass. This potentially connects it to several outstanding issues within the standard model of particle physics. It is one of a kind, at least as far as we know. It also has the very strange property that the quantum field associated with the Higgs boson is present everywhere in the universe. It is this property that gives all other particles their masses. Without the Higgs field, all known particles would be massless. Consequently, the Higgs field determines many properties of the universe, for example, the mass of the electron and, consequently, the size of atoms. There are also deep questions about the nature of the Higgs boson, such as whether it is a fundamental particle and is unique, or if there are other Higgs bosons.
We have definitely not found everything. If you take a look back at the really big, game-changing discoveries, like neutrino mass, the Higgs boson, the discovery of gravitational waves, the discovery of dark energy, these things come along every five to 10 years. You do not get these game-changing discoveries all the time, and you should not expect to. We are now at a point in time where we understand the universe really well, but we also understand there are so many questions that we do not understand, but we can start to answer.
We know there is dark matter out there. At some point, we will discover what it is. We do not know when, but we will discover what it is.
We also know that the particles that make up the universe have a very strange pattern of masses. It looks semi-random, and we do not really understand whether there is something fundamental hidden in that pattern, but we know it has something to do with the Higgs boson. Thomson would really love to know why particles’ masses have that pattern.
We also do not know why there is any matter left in the universe after the big bang. In principle, in the big bang, you produce matter and anti-matter. At some point, they come together, and they annihilate and we get energy. That is not what happened because we observe matter in the universe. So, there are all these really big questions out there, and at some point, we need answers to them.
The LHC will soon be shutting down for the high-luminosity upgrade. In the summer, on 29 June at 6am, we will switch off the LHC for four years. We are replacing about 1.2 kilometres of the 27-kilometre ring with this very advanced technology. When the particles come around the collider, we bend them towards each other. If you make the bunches of protons smaller and smaller, you get many, many more collisions. You concentrate everything in the same place. That is what these super-high-field magnets are doing.
We have this incredible superconducting cable that powers these magnets. Installing this is a massive task. It is by far the biggest thing that CERN has done for the last 20 years. At the same time, the big experimental collaborations, ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid, which we sometimes call the general-purpose detectors, are upgrading their giant detectors. These are, again, the biggest projects that the experiments have done since building the detectors themselves.
The High-Luminosity LHC will produce an enormous number of Higgs bosons, which is necessary to measure, for the first time, key properties such as how it interacts with itself.
Particle physicists have now begun to look at the future beyond the LHC and to think about constructing an even more powerful collider, like the Future Circular Collider. Thomson occasionally writes down his 10 big questions in particle physics, and half of them have something to do with the Higgs boson. Does the Higgs boson interact with dark matter? We know it is there, but we do not know the answer to that question. Why does the Higgs boson have the properties that it does? Is the Higgs boson on its own, or are there multiple Higgs bosons?
The only way you can really start to address those questions is to make what we are calling a Higgs factory, producing many Higgs bosons in much cleaner environments, so we can then look at the properties of the Higgs boson. If we see deviations from the properties we expect, we might then learn something about the unknown universe.
From what we know today, there is a grouping of interesting physics at what we call the electroweak scale, which corresponds to energies that we think existed about a 100th of a nanosecond after the big bang. At this time, elementary particles cease to be massless. The Higgs mechanism gives the W, Z and Higgs bosons clustered around the electroweak scale their mass. The top quark also has a similar mass. However, all the other fundamental particles have much smaller masses, which is perhaps more surprising.
Last year, across Europe, each individual scientific community came together and asked themselves the question: what should we do next at CERN? There was a massive consensus that the FCC is by far the best machine to do the science. That is because there is a huge gap in scientific sensitivity between this particular machine and the other things you could do. It is very unusual, even in a specific scientific community, to get such strong agreement. So we are convinced it is the best machine to do the science that we feel we need to do to continue our exploration of the universe.
Will there ever be a particle accelerator big enough? Is FCC the end of the line? One
The standard model is the field’s crown jewel. It describes the particles and forces that make up the visible universe with extraordinary precision. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 seemed to be the masterstroke that completed its picture of reality. But for all its success, the standard model says nothing about dark matter. It offers no deeper explanation for the masses of the particles it catalogues. It also cannot account for why the universe contains matter at all after the big bang.
The LHC is set to undergo major upgrades that will sharpen its search for rare phenomena. Thomson spoke to New Scientist reporter Alex Wilkins at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. He discussed what answers the LHC may still yield. He discussed why its physicists are going all in on a 13 billion pound collider as its successor.
When Thomson first read about CERN, we had three main fundamental forces, plus gravity. We knew about electromagnetism and knew about the particle that conveyed it, the photon. But we had never seen the particles associated with the weak force, the W and Z bosons. Those were discovered at CERN in 1983. We also did not know that fundamental particles called neutrinos had mass. Just over 25 years ago, we thought these particles were massless. The real massive discovery was the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.
The Higgs boson is radically different to any other particle we know. It has no spin and no electric charge. It only has mass. This potentially connects it to several outstanding issues within the standard model of particle physics. It is one of a kind, at least as far as we know. It also has the very strange property that the quantum field associated with the Higgs boson is present everywhere in the universe. It is this property that gives all other particles their masses. Without the Higgs field, all known particles would be massless. Consequently, the Higgs field determines many properties of the universe, for example, the mass of the electron and, consequently, the size of atoms. There are also deep questions about the nature of the Higgs boson, such as whether it is a fundamental particle and is unique, or if there are other Higgs bosons.
We have definitely not found everything. If you take a look back at the really big, game-changing discoveries, like neutrino mass, the Higgs boson, the discovery of gravitational waves, the discovery of dark energy, these things come along every five to 10 years. You do not get these game-changing discoveries all the time, and you should not expect to. We are now at a point in time where we understand the universe really well, but we also understand there are so many questions that we do not understand, but we can start to answer.
We know there is dark matter out there. At some point, we will discover what it is. We do not know when, but we will discover what it is.
We also know that the particles that make up the universe have a very strange pattern of masses. It looks semi-random, and we do not really understand whether there is something fundamental hidden in that pattern, but we know it has something to do with the Higgs boson. Thomson would really love to know why particles’ masses have that pattern.
We also do not know why there is any matter left in the universe after the big bang. In principle, in the big bang, you produce matter and anti-matter. At some point, they come together, and they annihilate and we get energy. That is not what happened because we observe matter in the universe. So, there are all these really big questions out there, and at some point, we need answers to them.
The LHC will soon be shutting down for the high-luminosity upgrade. In the summer, on 29 June at 6am, we will switch off the LHC for four years. We are replacing about 1.2 kilometres of the 27-kilometre ring with this very advanced technology. When the particles come around the collider, we bend them towards each other. If you make the bunches of protons smaller and smaller, you get many, many more collisions. You concentrate everything in the same place. That is what these super-high-field magnets are doing.
We have this incredible superconducting cable that powers these magnets. Installing this is a massive task. It is by far the biggest thing that CERN has done for the last 20 years. At the same time, the big experimental collaborations, ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid, which we sometimes call the general-purpose detectors, are upgrading their giant detectors. These are, again, the biggest projects that the experiments have done since building the detectors themselves.
The High-Luminosity LHC will produce an enormous number of Higgs bosons, which is necessary to measure, for the first time, key properties such as how it interacts with itself.
Particle physicists have now begun to look at the future beyond the LHC and to think about constructing an even more powerful collider, like the Future Circular Collider. Thomson occasionally writes down his 10 big questions in particle physics, and half of them have something to do with the Higgs boson. Does the Higgs boson interact with dark matter? We know it is there, but we do not know the answer to that question. Why does the Higgs boson have the properties that it does? Is the Higgs boson on its own, or are there multiple Higgs bosons?
The only way you can really start to address those questions is to make what we are calling a Higgs factory, producing many Higgs bosons in much cleaner environments, so we can then look at the properties of the Higgs boson. If we see deviations from the properties we expect, we might then learn something about the unknown universe.
From what we know today, there is a grouping of interesting physics at what we call the electroweak scale, which corresponds to energies that we think existed about a 100th of a nanosecond after the big bang. At this time, elementary particles cease to be massless. The Higgs mechanism gives the W, Z and Higgs bosons clustered around the electroweak scale their mass. The top quark also has a similar mass. However, all the other fundamental particles have much smaller masses, which is perhaps more surprising.
Last year, across Europe, each individual scientific community came together and asked themselves the question: what should we do next at CERN? There was a massive consensus that the FCC is by far the best machine to do the science. That is because there is a huge gap in scientific sensitivity between this particular machine and the other things you could do. It is very unusual, even in a specific scientific community, to get such strong agreement. So we are convinced it is the best machine to do the science that we feel we need to do to continue our exploration of the universe.
Will there ever be a particle accelerator big enough? Is FCC the end of the line? One
The standard model is the field’s crown jewel. It describes the particles and forces that make up the visible universe with extraordinary precision. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 seemed to be the masterstroke that completed its picture of reality. But for all its success, the standard model says nothing about dark matter. It offers no deeper explanation for the masses of the particles it catalogues. It also cannot account for why the universe contains matter at all after the big bang.
The LHC is set to undergo major upgrades that will sharpen its search for rare phenomena. Thomson spoke to New Scientist reporter Alex Wilkins at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. He discussed what answers the LHC may still yield. He discussed why its physicists are going all in on a 13 billion pound collider as its successor.
When Thomson first read about CERN, we had three main fundamental forces, plus gravity. We knew about electromagnetism and knew about the particle that conveyed it, the photon. But we had never seen the particles associated with the weak force, the W and Z bosons. Those were discovered at CERN in 1983. We also did not know that fundamental particles called neutrinos had mass. Just over 25 years ago, we thought these particles were massless. The real massive discovery was the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.
The Higgs boson is radically different to any other particle we know. It has no spin and no electric charge. It only has mass. This potentially connects it to several outstanding issues within the standard model of particle physics. It is one of a kind, at least as far as we know. It also has the very strange property that the quantum field associated with the Higgs boson is present everywhere in the universe. It is this property that gives all other particles their masses. Without the Higgs field, all known particles would be massless. Consequently, the Higgs field determines many properties of the universe, for example, the mass of the electron and, consequently, the size of atoms. There are also deep questions about the nature of the Higgs boson, such as whether it is a fundamental particle and is unique, or if there are other Higgs bosons.
We have definitely not found everything. If you take a look back at the really big, game-changing discoveries, like neutrino mass, the Higgs boson, the discovery of gravitational waves, the discovery of dark energy, these things come along every five to 10 years. You do not get these game-changing discoveries all the time, and you should not expect to. We are now at a point in time where we understand the universe really well, but we also understand there are so many questions that we do not understand, but we can start to answer.
We know there is dark matter out there. At some point, we will discover what it is. We do not know when, but we will discover what it is.
We also know that the particles that make up the universe have a very strange pattern of masses. It looks semi-random, and we do not really understand whether there is something fundamental hidden in that pattern, but we know it has something to do with the Higgs boson. Thomson would really love to know why particles’ masses have that pattern.
We also do not know why there is any matter left in the universe after the big bang. In principle, in the big bang, you produce matter and anti-matter. At some point, they come together, and they annihilate and we get energy. That is not what happened because we observe matter in the universe. So, there are all these really big questions out there, and at some point, we need answers to them.
The LHC will soon be shutting down for the high-luminosity upgrade. In the summer, on 29 June at 6am, we will switch off the LHC for four years. We are replacing about 1.2 kilometres of the 27-kilometre ring with this very advanced technology. When the particles come around the collider, we bend them towards each other. If you make the bunches of protons smaller and smaller, you get many, many more collisions. You concentrate everything in the same place. That is what these super-high-field magnets are doing.
We have this incredible superconducting cable that powers these magnets. Installing this is a massive task. It is by far the biggest thing that CERN has done for the last 20 years. At the same time, the big experimental collaborations, ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid, which we sometimes call the general-purpose detectors, are upgrading their giant detectors. These are, again, the biggest projects that the experiments have done since building the detectors themselves.
The High-Luminosity LHC will produce an enormous number of Higgs bosons, which is necessary to measure, for the first time, key properties such as how it interacts with itself.
Particle physicists have now begun to look at the future beyond the LHC and to think about constructing an even more powerful collider, like the Future Circular Collider. Thomson occasionally writes down his 10 big questions in particle physics, and half of them have something to do with the Higgs boson. Does the Higgs boson interact with dark matter? We know it is there, but we do not know the answer to that question. Why does the Higgs boson have the properties that it does? Is the Higgs boson on its own, or are there multiple Higgs bosons?
The only way you can really start to address those questions is to make what we are calling a Higgs factory, producing many Higgs bosons in much cleaner environments, so we can then look at the properties of the Higgs boson. If we see deviations from the properties we expect, we might then learn something about the unknown universe.
From what we know today, there is a grouping of interesting physics at what we call the electroweak scale, which corresponds to energies that we think existed about a 100th of a nanosecond after the big bang. At this time, elementary particles cease to be massless. The Higgs mechanism gives the W, Z and Higgs bosons clustered around the electroweak scale their mass. The top quark also has a similar mass. However, all the other fundamental particles have much smaller masses, which is perhaps more surprising.
Last year, across Europe, each individual scientific community came together and asked themselves the question: what should we do next at CERN? There was a massive consensus that the FCC is by far the best machine to do the science. That is because there is a huge gap in scientific sensitivity between this particular machine and the other things you could do. It is very unusual, even in a specific scientific community, to get such strong agreement. So we are convinced it is the best machine to do the science that we feel we need to do to continue our exploration of the universe.
Will there ever be a particle accelerator big enough? Is FCC the end of the line? One
The standard model is the field’s crown jewel. It describes the particles and forces that make up the visible universe with extraordinary precision. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 seemed to be the masterstroke that completed its picture of reality. But for all its success, the standard model says nothing about dark matter. It offers no deeper explanation for the masses of the particles it catalogues. It also cannot account for why the universe contains matter at all after the big bang.
The LHC is set to undergo major upgrades that will sharpen its search for rare phenomena. Thomson spoke to New Scientist reporter Alex Wilkins at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. He discussed what answers the LHC may still yield. He discussed why its physicists are going all in on a 13 billion pound collider as its successor.
When Thomson first read about CERN, we had three main fundamental forces, plus gravity. We knew about electromagnetism and knew about the particle that conveyed it, the photon. But we had never seen the particles associated with the weak force, the W and Z bosons. Those were discovered at CERN in 1983. We also did not know that fundamental particles called neutrinos had mass. Just over 25 years ago, we thought these particles were massless. The real massive discovery was the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.
The Higgs boson is radically different to any other particle we know. It has no spin and no electric charge. It only has mass. This potentially connects it to several outstanding issues within the standard model of particle physics. It is one of a kind, at least as far as we know. It also has the very strange property that the quantum field associated with the Higgs boson is present everywhere in the universe. It is this property that gives all other particles their masses. Without the Higgs field, all known particles would be massless. Consequently, the Higgs field determines many properties of the universe, for example, the mass of the electron and, consequently, the size of atoms. There are also deep questions about the nature of the Higgs boson, such as whether it is a fundamental particle and is unique, or if there are other Higgs bosons.
We have definitely not found everything. If you take a look back at the really big, game-changing discoveries, like neutrino mass, the Higgs boson, the discovery of gravitational waves, the discovery of dark energy, these things come along every five to 10 years. You do not get these game-changing discoveries all the time, and you should not expect to. We are now at a point in time where we understand the universe really well, but we also understand there are so many questions that we do not understand, but we can start to answer.
We know there is dark matter out there. At some point, we will discover what it is. We do not know when, but we will discover what it is.
We also know that the particles that make up the universe have a very strange pattern of masses. It looks semi-random, and we do not really understand whether there is something fundamental hidden in that pattern, but we know it has something to do with the Higgs boson. Thomson would really love to know why particles’ masses have that pattern.
We also do not know why there is any matter left in the universe after the big bang. In principle, in the big bang, you produce matter and anti-matter. At some point, they come together, and they annihilate and we get energy. That is not what happened because we observe matter in the universe. So, there are all these really big questions out there, and at some point, we need answers to them.
The LHC will soon be shutting down for the high-luminosity upgrade. In the summer, on 29 June at 6am, we will switch off the LHC for four years. We are replacing about 1.2 kilometres of the 27-kilometre ring with this very advanced technology. When the particles come around the collider, we bend them towards each other. If you make the bunches of protons smaller and smaller, you get many, many more collisions. You concentrate everything in the same place. That is what these super-high-field magnets are doing.
We have this incredible superconducting cable that powers these magnets. Installing this is a massive task. It is by far the biggest thing that CERN has done for the last 20 years. At the same time, the big experimental collaborations, ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid, which we sometimes call the general-purpose detectors, are upgrading their giant detectors. These are, again, the biggest projects that the experiments have done since building the detectors themselves.
The High-Luminosity LHC will produce an enormous number of Higgs bosons, which is necessary to measure, for the first time, key properties such as how it interacts with itself.
Particle physicists have now begun to look at the future beyond the LHC and to think about constructing an even more powerful collider, like the Future Circular Collider. Thomson occasionally writes down his 10 big questions in particle physics, and half of them have something to do with the Higgs boson. Does the Higgs boson interact with dark matter? We know it is there, but we do not know the answer to that question. Why does the Higgs boson have the properties that it does? Is the Higgs boson on its own, or are there multiple Higgs bosons?
The only way you can really start to address those questions is to make what we are calling a Higgs factory, producing many Higgs bosons in much cleaner environments, so we can then look at the properties of the Higgs boson. If we see deviations from the properties we expect, we might then learn something about the unknown universe.
From what we know today, there is a grouping of interesting physics at what we call the electroweak scale, which corresponds to energies that we think existed about a 100th of a nanosecond after the big bang. At this time, elementary particles cease to be massless. The Higgs mechanism gives the W, Z and Higgs bosons clustered around the electroweak scale their mass. The top quark also has a similar mass. However, all the other fundamental particles have much smaller masses, which is perhaps more surprising.
Last year, across Europe, each individual scientific community came together and asked themselves the question: what should we do next at CERN? There was a massive consensus that the FCC is by far the best machine to do the science. That is because there is a huge gap in scientific sensitivity between this particular machine and the other things you could do. It is very unusual, even in a specific scientific community, to get such strong agreement. So we are convinced it is the best machine to do the science that we feel we need to do to continue our exploration of the universe.
Will there ever be a particle accelerator big enough? Is FCC the end of the line? One
The standard model is the field’s crown jewel. It describes the particles and forces that make up the visible universe with extraordinary precision. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 seemed to be the masterstroke that completed its picture of reality. But for all its success, the standard model says nothing about dark matter. It offers no deeper explanation for the masses of the particles it catalogues. It also cannot account for why the universe contains matter at all after the big bang.
The LHC is set to undergo major upgrades that will sharpen its search for rare phenomena. Thomson spoke to New Scientist reporter Alex Wilkins at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. He discussed what answers the LHC may still yield. He discussed why its physicists are going all in on a 13 billion pound collider as its successor.
When Thomson first read about CERN, we had three main fundamental forces, plus gravity. We knew about electromagnetism and knew about the particle that conveyed it, the photon. But we had never seen the particles associated with the weak force, the W and Z bosons. Those were discovered at CERN in 1983. We also did not know that fundamental particles called neutrinos had mass. Just over 25 years ago, we thought these particles were massless. The real massive discovery was the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.
The Higgs boson is radically different to any other particle we know. It has no spin and no electric charge. It only has mass. This potentially connects it to several outstanding issues within the standard model of particle physics. It is one of a kind, at least as far as we know. It also has the very strange property that the quantum field associated with the Higgs boson is present everywhere in the universe. It is this property that gives all other particles their masses. Without the Higgs field, all known particles would be massless. Consequently, the Higgs field determines many properties of the universe, for example, the mass of the electron and, consequently, the size of atoms. There are also deep questions about the nature of the Higgs boson, such as whether it is a fundamental particle and is unique, or if there are other Higgs bosons.
We have definitely not found everything. If you take a look back at the really big, game-changing discoveries, like neutrino mass, the Higgs boson, the discovery of gravitational waves, the discovery of dark energy, these things come along every five to 10 years. You do not get these game-changing discoveries all the time, and you should not expect to. We are now at a point in time where we understand the universe really well, but we also understand there are so many questions that we do not understand, but we can start to answer.
We know there is dark matter out there. At some point, we will discover what it is. We do not know when, but we will discover what it is.
We also know that the particles that make up the universe have a very strange pattern of masses. It looks semi-random, and we do not really understand whether there is something fundamental hidden in that pattern, but we know it has something to do with the Higgs boson. Thomson would really love to know why particles’ masses have that pattern.
We also do not know why there is any matter left in the universe after the big bang. In principle, in the big bang, you produce matter and anti-matter. At some point, they come together, and they annihilate and we get energy. That is not what happened because we observe matter in the universe. So, there are all these really big questions out there, and at some point, we need answers to them.
The LHC will soon be shutting down for the high-luminosity upgrade. In the summer, on 29 June at 6am, we will switch off the LHC for four years. We are replacing about 1.2 kilometres of the 27-kilometre ring with this very advanced technology. When the particles come around the collider, we bend them towards each other. If you make the bunches of protons smaller and smaller, you get many, many more collisions. You concentrate everything in the same place. That is what these super-high-field magnets are doing.
We have this incredible superconducting cable that powers these magnets. Installing this is a massive task. It is by far the biggest thing that CERN has done for the last 20 years. At the same time, the big experimental collaborations, ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid, which we sometimes call the general-purpose detectors, are upgrading their giant detectors. These are, again, the biggest projects that the experiments have done since building the detectors themselves.
The High-Luminosity LHC will produce an enormous number of Higgs bosons, which is necessary to measure, for the first time, key properties such as how it interacts with itself.
Particle physicists have now begun to look at the future beyond the LHC and to think about constructing an even more powerful collider, like the Future Circular Collider. Thomson occasionally writes down his 10 big questions in particle physics, and half of them have something to do with the Higgs boson. Does the Higgs boson interact with dark matter? We know it is there, but we do not know the answer to that question. Why does the Higgs boson have the properties that it does? Is the Higgs boson on its own, or are there multiple Higgs bosons?
The only way you can really start to address those questions is to make what we are calling a Higgs factory, producing many Higgs bosons in much cleaner environments, so we can then look at the properties of the Higgs boson. If we see deviations from the properties we expect, we might then learn something about the unknown universe.
From what we know today, there is a grouping of interesting physics at what we call the electroweak scale, which corresponds to energies that we think existed about a 100th of a nanosecond after the big bang. At this time, elementary particles cease to be massless. The Higgs mechanism gives the W, Z and Higgs bosons clustered around the electroweak scale their mass. The top quark also has a similar mass. However, all the other fundamental particles have much smaller masses, which is perhaps more surprising.
Last year, across Europe, each individual scientific community came together and asked themselves the question: what should we do next at CERN? There was a massive consensus that the FCC is by far the best machine to do the science. That is because there is a huge gap in scientific sensitivity between this particular machine and the other things you could do. It is very unusual, even in a specific scientific community, to get such strong agreement. So we are convinced it is the best machine to do the science that we feel we need to do to continue our exploration of the universe.
Will there ever be a particle accelerator big enough? Is FCC the end of the line? One
The standard model is the field’s crown jewel. It describes the particles and forces that make up the visible universe with extraordinary precision. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 seemed to be the masterstroke that completed its picture of reality. But for all its success, the standard model says nothing about dark matter. It offers no deeper explanation for the masses of the particles it catalogues. he Higgs boson’s unique properties make it a prime candidate for probing physics beyond the standard model. By studying its interactions with other particles, physicists hope to uncover subtle deviations that could hint at new forces or particles. These deviations might explain why the Higgs boson’s mass is so much lighter than theoretical predictions suggest, a puzzle known as the hierarchy problem.
Thomson and his team are now focusing on the High-Luminosity LHC, an upgrade set to increase collision rates tenfold. This will allow them to observe rare processes, such as Higgs bosons decaying into pairs of muons, which occur only once in every 10,000 Higgs events. Each such observation could reveal cracks in the standard model’s foundation.
Beyond the LHC, CERN is planning the Future Circular Collider (FCC), a 91-kilometer ring that would smash particles at energies seven times higher than the LHC. The FCC’s primary goal is to produce millions of Higgs bosons, enabling precision measurements that could expose new physics. Critics question the £13 billion price tag, but Thomson argues it is a necessary investment to answer fundamental questions about the universe’s composition and evolution.
The next decade will be pivotal. If the upgraded LHC and FCC fail to find anomalies, particle physics may face a crisis of direction. Yet Thomson remains optimistic, noting that each technological leap in collider design has historically unveiled unexpected discoveries. The search for dark matter, the nature of neutrino masses, and the imbalance between matter and antimatter all hinge on these experiments.
Sources
1. CERN