£13 Billion Collider Proposed as Successor to the Large Hadron Collider

CERN is proposing a £13 billion collider to succeed the Large Hadron Collider, representing the organization’s next major investment in unraveling the mysteries of the universe. More than 40 years after a book about the lab ignited his curiosity, Mark Thomson now leads CERN as its director general, tasked with charting the future of particle physics at a pivotal moment. Despite the discovery of the Higgs boson, the Standard Model remains incomplete, failing to explain phenomena like dark matter or the imbalance between matter and antimatter. “In a sense, particle physics hasn’t changed since Thomson was a boy: it is dazzling in its outline, but maddening in the details it cannot yet supply,” notes the organization as it prepares to address these lingering questions with a new generation of research. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 was a monumental achievement, but it did not deliver a complete picture of reality. Instead, it illuminated the profound gaps in our understanding of the fundamental universe. Mark Thomson notes that the field’s outline remains “dazzling,” yet is hampered by “maddening” details it cannot yet explain, a sentiment echoing the persistent mysteries surrounding particle physics despite decades of…