Top scientist encourages more research into 'dark universe'

With the Higgs boson in the bag, the head of the CERN research center in Geneva urged scientists on Tuesday to push on to unveil the "dark universe" - the hidden matter that makes up 95 per cent of the cosmos and is still a mystery to earthbound researchers.

Rolf Heuer spoke after the Nobel prize in physics went to Briton Peter Higgs and Belgian Francois Englert for predicting the existence of the Higgs boson particle, which explains how fundamental matter gained the mass to form stars and planets.

"We have now completed the Standard Model," Heuer told reporters, referring to the portrait of the known universe drafted in the 1980s.

"It is high time for us to go on to the dark universe," added the director-general of the world's main institution that focuses on the basic particles of nature.

The Higgs boson and its associated force field were among the last major building blocks of that model of how the cosmos works.

Their existence was confirmed after three decades when the particle was seen last year in CERN's underground particle smasher, the giant Large Hadron Collider.

The LHC, now in the middle of a two-year refit and upgrade, is due to resume operations in early 2015 with its power doubled.

"That will open promising territory into new physics," Heuer's deputy, Sergio Bertolucci, said. "New physics" is the term scientists use for the realms beyond the Standard Model that currently are elusive.

First among these - highlighted in Nobel acceptance comments by Englert - is "super-symmetry," the theory that all basic particles have a heavier but invisible partner, which is linked to concepts like string theory and extra dimensions.

No sign of super-symmetry has yet appeared in CERN's collider, leading some science writers to voice doubts about the concept.

But Heuer said that just because it was elusive did not mean it did not exist. "It took us 30 years to find the Higgs," he added.

Reuters

(China Daily 10/10/2013 page12)