Editorial: Search for new Physics

This is an exciting time for particle physicists around the world. Nearly ten years after the discovery of the Higgs Boson, a subatomic particle that gives mass to all matter, scientists are engaged in expanding our understanding of the cosmos, the birth of our universe and its fate. After a gap of three years, the announcement about resumption of experiments by CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) at Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a giant collider machine built in a 27km-long circular tunnel underneath the French-Swiss border, brings a wave of excitement. The LHC smashes together beams of proton particles at near speed of light in an absolute vacuum to enable scientists to collect data from the fragmentation of particles to probe the limits of physics as we know it. By restarting the LHC and studying the infinitely small fragments, physicists wish to further push the limits of our knowledge on topics like dark matter or anti-matter. The discovery of a new force in nature is the holy grail of particle physics. The CERN scientists may well be closer to confirming the existence of such a force that will help fill the gaps in the present understanding of the universe and unravel its mysteries such as dark matter and dark energy. The Higgs Boson has become a vital part of the physicists’ toolkit to explore the vast unknown. These measurements will have a profound impact that reaches far beyond collider physics, guiding our understanding of the origin of dark matter.

In a way, studying the Higgs Boson is vital to working out whether there is physics to be discovered beyond the Standard Model. Our current understanding of the constituents of the universe falls remarkably short — we do not know what 95% of the universe is made of or why there is such a large imbalance between matter and antimatter. Though the Standard Model is considered the closest humanity has come to explaining how the building blocks of the universe behave, it cannot explain everything we observe about the world around us. It says nothing, for example, about dark matter — the mysterious stuff that makes up some 27% of the universe nor can it explain the nature of gravity. Physicists know that it must eventually be replaced by a more advanced framework. Much of the cosmos, it is believed, consists of dark energy, a force that appears to be driving the expansion of the universe, and dark matter, a mysterious substance that seems to hold the cosmic web of matter in place like an invisible skeleton. The LHC was built to discover physics beyond the Standard Model. Scientists are searching for hints of new physical phenomena which could lead the way to a deeper understanding of the cosmos. The upgrades in experiments at LHC will help them in the task.