The Large Hadron Collider discovered the Higgs Boson, but CERN’s physicists now have bigger plans.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-04-24/particle-physics-needs-private-funding-for-cern-s-next-discovery
The Large Hadron Collider discovered the Higgs Boson, but CERN’s physicists now have bigger plans.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-04-24/particle-physics-needs-private-funding-for-cern-s-next-discovery
3 Comments
*Paula Doenecke and Hugo Miller for Bloomberg News*
There is something wrong with the leading theoretical framework for how the world works. If its equations are correct, neither the Earth nor anything else in the universe could exist. And yet the Standard Model of physics is the best explanation we have, according to scientists at particle physics institute CERN.
Fourteen years ago, physicists at CERN popped champagne corks over breakfast, thrilled to have confirmed the existence of the Higgs Boson, measurable evidence of a previously theoretical field that permeates the universe and gives mass to fundamental particles.
The discovery, made possible by the Large Hadron Collider, a vast particle accelerator built underneath CERN’s home near the Swiss Alps, helped win a Nobel prize. And yet some questions — such as how the Higgs interacts with itself — are now beyond the LHC. With 95% of the universe made up of “dark matter” — material that physicists really don’t understand and which they struggle to explain — CERN’s scientists decided that a newer, bigger collider will be needed.
They hope to elicit more clues about the universe by building the Future Circular Collider (FCC), a giant 91-kilometer (57-mile) loop running under Lake Geneva and the surrounding Jura and Alp mountain ranges. It would dwarf the LHC, and make ultraprecise measurements of higher-energy proton collisions in a bid to push the frontiers of physics. Access shafts would stretch as deep as 400 meters, double those of the LHC.
[Read the full story here.](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-04-24/particle-physics-needs-private-funding-for-cern-s-next-discovery?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc3NzEwNTc4NSwiZXhwIjoxNzc3NzEwNTg1LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJURFpLU0lLR0lGUjcwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJEMzU0MUJFQjhBQUY0QkUwQkFBOUQzNkI3QjlCRjI4OCJ9.Ee2Z8PpuJNWpiBzuPFciFOGwEjdO01v39Mcs98oWdSw)
Ok…let us tax the people hoarding all that “private”money and we can fund projects properly without giving billionaires ownership of whatever we find/learn
Not like they earned most of their fortunes through their own hard work.
Yes, but we can tax that private money and the projects can be made publicly.
They don’t and shouldn’t be in the hands of private interests