Eur Phys J C (2004) 34: s3-s10
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjcd/s2004-04-001-4

I. Welcome

The road ahead

¹ Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1110 W. Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801,  
² Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106,  

Received: 1 August 2003
Accepted: 9 February 2004
Published online: 13 July 2004

Abstract

I describe the surrounding landscape on the road to the CERN Large Hadron Collider. I revisit the milestones of hadron-collider physics, and from them draw lessons for the future. I recall the primary motivation for the journey – understanding the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking – and speculate that even greater discoveries may await us. I review the physics that we know beyond the standard model – dark matter, dark energy, and neutrino masses – and discuss the status of grand-unified theories. I list the reasons why the Higgs boson is central to the standard model as well as to physics beyond the standard model.

PACS: 13.85.-t