CERN’s new chief on the gamble that could fix our picture of reality

• 01Mark Thomson is CERN's director general and took charge as the Large Hadron Collider shuts down for upgrades.
• 02The standard model describes particles and forces that make up the visible universe with extraordinary precision.
• 03In 2012, the Higgs boson was discovered at CERN.
• 04The standard model cannot explain dark matter, offers no explanation for why particles have their specific masses, and cannot account for why the universe contains matter after the big bang.
• 05The W and Z bosons associated with the weak force were discovered at CERN in 1983.
• 06Thomson stated that neutrinos were thought to be massless over 25 years ago but were later found to have mass.
• 07The Higgs boson has no spin and no electric charge, only mass, and the quantum field associated with it is present everywhere in the universe.
• 08CERN is planning a £13 billion collider as a successor to the LHC.
• 09Thomson stated that major game-changing discoveries in physics occur approximately every five to 10 years.
• 10The LHC is scheduled to shut down on June 29 at 6am for the high-luminosity upgrade.

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Mark Thomson, the newly appointed director general of CERN, discussed ongoing challenges in particle physics as the Large Hadron Collider undergoes major upgrades. While the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson and the standard model's precision have advanced the field significantly, major unanswered questions remain, including the nature of dark matter, why particles have specific masses, and why matter exists in the universe after the big bang. CERN is planning a £13 billion successor collider to address these fundamental questions.