文章强调「未出现者」同样关键：标准模型未纳入可能构成暗物质的粒子，无法说明为何宇宙中物质胜过反物质，也未解释大爆炸本身；此外，希格斯质量所设定的原子尺度与量子重力的普朗克尺度（Planck scale）之间存在巨大的尺度落差，形成所谓阶层问题（hierarchy problem）。Edward Witten 在 1981 年提出一种思路：若存在仅比希格斯稍重的新粒子，便可恢复平衡，而 LHC 的能量理应足以产生它们；然而这些「新物理」并未在资料中显现。
缺乏新粒子或新力引发领域危机：Mikhail Shifman 在 2012 年表示失望，并指出缺少实验指引便难以推测自然。方向不明也使前景黯淡；Adam Falkowski 当时预测，若无法搜寻更重粒子，粒子物理将缓慢衰退，职缺稳定减少，研究者终将自然消退。作者指出自 2012 年起逾 13 年后，相关新闻频率确实下降，但也注意到 LHC 仍将至少再运行约 10 年，且近几年 AI 改善资料处理：模式辨识更准确分类碰撞事件，提升散射振幅（scattering amplitude，即交互作用发生机率）的精密测量；例如更精确估计碰撞后产生的顶夸克（top quark）与底夸克（bottom quark）数量，而任何相对于标准模型预测的统计偏离都可能指向未知基本粒子。
In a *Quanta Magazine* article published on January 26, 2026, Kristina Armitage revisits the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) milestone of discovering the Higgs boson in July 2012. The Higgs was the last missing piece of the 1970s-era Standard Model of particle physics, which describes 25 known elementary particles and their interactions. Scientists built the roughly 27-kilometer LHC at a cost of billions of euros to go beyond the Standard Model, yet the collision data still showed only those 25 particles.
The article stresses that what did not appear matters as much as what did: the Standard Model lacks a dark-matter particle, does not explain why matter dominates over antimatter, and does not account for the Big Bang; it also leaves a huge gap between the Higgs-set atomic scale and the quantum-gravity Planck scale, the “hierarchy problem.” In 1981, Edward Witten proposed an idea in which balance would be restored by additional particles only slightly heavier than the Higgs, and the LHC should have been energetic enough to produce them; but such “new physics” did not show up in the data.
That absence sparked a crisis: in 2012, Mikhail Shifman voiced disappointment and argued that without experimental guidance it is hard to guess nature’s rules. With no clear target, the outlook darkened; Adam Falkowski predicted a slow decay in which jobs steadily decrease and particle physicists die out naturally. More than 13 years after 2012, Armitage notes that particle-physics news has indeed thinned, yet the LHC is still set to run for at least another decade, and recent years have brought AI-driven data handling: pattern recognition classifies collision events more accurately, sharpening measurements of scattering amplitudes (interaction probabilities), such as more precise counts of top quarks versus bottom quarks in collision debris, where any statistically significant deviation from Standard Model predictions could point to unknown elementary particles.