Is particle physics at a dead end?

Back in action: the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Massimo Dallaglio / Alamy Stock Photo

Ten years ago, physicists working at CERN, the international research institute for particle physics near Geneva, announced the discovery of the Higgs boson. This elusive particle, first predicted in the mid-1960s by British physicist Peter Higgs and others, had finally been coaxed into revealing itself by colliding mundane particles called protons together at incredibly high energies in CERN’s 27km-long accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

It was a big deal. Without the Higgs boson, there would be no atoms, no stars and planets, and no you or me. This particle is what gives some other particles (like the…