CERN’s new chief on the gamble that could fix our picture of reality
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- Mark Thomson serves as CERN’s director general while the Large Hadron Collider is shut down for upgrades.
- CERN plans to invest £13 billion in a next‑generation collider to follow the LHC.
- W and Z bosons were discovered at CERN in 1983, filling a gap in the known fundamental forces.
- Neutrinos were confirmed to have mass just over 25 years ago, overturning the earlier belief they were massless.
- Higgs boson was discovered in 2012 and uniquely provides mass to other particles via an omnipresent quantum field.
Why it matters: CERN secures £13 billion for a successor collider, enabling the lab to continue probing dark matter, particle masses and matter‑antimatter asymmetry, and keeping Europe at the forefront of fundamental physics.
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