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Been there, got the Higgs T shirt. Now Cern scientists seek invisible dark matter

Fermi Provides New Insights on Dark Matter

How does Dr Sam Harper, particle physicist, feel about the greatest discovery in particle physics in half a century? Well, frankly, Higgs schmiggs.

“I was quite blasé,” he says in one of the control rooms at the Cern particle physics laboratory in Geneva. “To me, finding it was a bit boring.” The problem was, he explains, they expected it.

After Cern’s most successful year — in which it finally discovered the Higgs boson, which gives other particles mass — Dr Harper, like many physicists, hopes for more. An extra dimension, perhaps, or, he explains, a Pringle-shaped universe. Even the unification of some forces would be nice.

“Whatever I know is boring,” he says. “I want to find something, look at it, and know nothing about