In recent news for CERN, the world’s largest nuclear and particle physics laboratory. They have now signed India to become an associate member of the European organization. India had “observer” status until September last year, when the CERN council adopted a resolution increasing its position. In the past few years, Indian scientists have been involved in several experiments at CERN. India made contributions to the construction of the Large Hadron Collider. Indian scientists also played a significant role in the Compact Muon Boson experiments, which is one of the two experiments that triggered the discovery of the Higgs Boson.

The discovery of the Higgs Boson in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN showed the world a new way in understanding the universe. By 2016, the LHC produced about the same number of collisions it did in all its previous years combined. At its current rate, it produces about a Higgs a second. US scientists, with international partners are trying to develop upgrades for a high-luminosity LHC, that would provide 10 times the collisions. This would launch a new area of physics, it would start an era of high-precision Higgs Boson physics. Their progress this year has been outstanding. They have created a successful prototype, this could lead to the strongest accelerator magnet ever created.

Currently, theoreticians aren’t truly necessary in this new category of physics. With the discovery of the Higgs, there’s been a change. Instead of creating new theories, experiments are looking for more evidence to support already exposed theories. Whenever something new is found, theorists try to explain and make sense of it. Michelangelo Mangano, a theoretical physicist who works within experimental physics says, “It’s like when you go mushroom hunting. You spend all of you time looking and at the end of the day you may find nothing. Here it’s the same, there’s a lot of wasted energy but it doesn’t lead to much. But occasionally you can find a little gold nugget, a perfect mushroom.” After the discovery of the Higgs we thought we knew all the Standard Model, but “many physicists were optimistic about finding new anomalies.”(Harriet Jarlett, CERN).