2013 Will Bring New Physics

POPSCI - 1.1.13 by Sean Carroll

If the previous era was about understanding the physics of everyday stuff, the next will be dominated by the attempt to grasp more elusive realms, including one of the most mysterious of all: dark matter.

On July 4, 2012, a panel of scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva announced the discovery of a new particle, the long-anticipated Higgs boson (or something very much like it). The Higgs is the final piece of the Standard Model of particle physics, a theory that accounts for everything we experience in our lives, from rocks to puppies to stars and planets. After decades of searching and billions of dollars, the Higgs discovery marked the end of one era and the beginning of another, which scientists will embark upon in 2013.


If the previous era was about understanding the physics of everyday stuff, the next will be dominated by the attempt to grasp more elusive realms, including one of the most mysterious of all: dark matter. Astronomers have verified that the universe has about five times more matter than we can account for with the “ordinary” particles we’ve discovered here on Earth. The rest is dark matter. Physicists haven’t observed it directly yet, but they’re getting much closer.

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