What the Discovery of the Higgs Boson Tells us About Physics, Mankind and the Universe
Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director of the most prominent and complex scientific experiment in history, is back at Falling Walls after his first talk in 2009 to show us which walls the 27-kilometer-long particle accelerator Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has broken down by discovering the Higgs Boson (or something very close to it) – and what comes next. We can now be very sure that the Standard Model, our current best description of how particles are behaving, is not entirely wrong – an insight which saves us from trashing 40 years of quantum physics. But to which extent is the model accurate? How close is the “God particle” to what we were expecting, and how does that translate to updating our vision of the universe? After successfully leading the CERN through controversies, economic crises, technical and budget issues, Heuer plans to take the LHC to the next phase, beyond the Standard Model, beyond the visible and “ordinary” matter, on a quest to explore the dark universe: “We have achieved a breakthrough, but the real work has only just begun. We need to measure our find, and if we find something that contradicts our theory, then that will automatically open the door to a new type of physics. After all, our so-called Standard Model only describes 4 to 5 percent of our universe”.