During the 20th century the search for a theory of how the
physical world works at its most fundamental level went from one
success to another. The earliest years of the century saw
revolutionary new ideas including Einstein's special relativity
and the beginnings of quantum theory, while the decades that
followed each were times of surprising new insights. By the
mid-1970s all the elements of what is now called the Standard
Model were in place, and the final decades of the century were
ones dominated by endless experimental results confirming this
theory's predictions. By the end of the millennium, we were left
in an uncomfortable state: the Standard Model was not fully
satisfactory, leaving various important questions unanswered,
but no experimental results disagreeing with it. Physicists had
little to nothing in the way of hints as to how to proceed. The
LHC was supposed to be the answer to this problem. It could
produce Higgs particles, allowing study of a crucial and less
than satisfactory part of the St