The announcement this week that two groups of scientists have narrowed the search for the elusive Higgs Boson? made headlines around the world. Next year, physicists actually hope to find the Higgs particle.
But is this an end to physics? No - It's just the beginning. The Higgs particle is the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle, called the Standard Model of particles although we have yet to confirm its existence.
Once found, it will complete this picture of known sub-atomic particles. However, the Standard Model can only explain 4% of the matter/energy content of the universe. The rest is made of dark matter (23%) and dark energy (73%). We know that atoms make up a distinct minority in this universe and 96% of the univese is NOT made of atoms (and the particles of the Standard Model). Even more glaring, the Standard Model does not contain gravity, yet gravity is the most pervasive force in the universe.
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