Answer to Question #86287 in Physics for Sayaka Hosoya

Question

What's the most important question physicists should address over the next decade?

Answer 1

I love such interesting questions because they do not have correct answers or the desired answer actually depends on context. I remember about 5-6 years ago David Kaplan, a theoretical particle physicist during a conference dedicated to the LHS launch was asked: "What is the financial gain of running [LHS]?" His answer was: "I have no idea"! He then compared the LHC to radio waves. When they were discovered, they were merely yet another kind of radiation, and no one knew what a huge progress humanity will make using the radio waves. So as a true natural science physics discovers and investigates the world around us. Sadly, these researches are limited by the amount of money that they require to be accomplished and processed.

So in my humble opinion, over the next decades physicists will continue thinking about making nuclear fusion work. Also there is a question: is a standard model complete? What is the status of supersymmetry? And, finally, what is the physics beyond the standard model? And since the last questions seem to be interesting as theories, the nuclear fusion can help humanity to cope with energy shortage and seems to be more important from a practical point of view.