The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) brought particle physics to the TeV energy frontier, at which some long-lasting questions related to the standard model are being answered. But, EU-funded physicists had reasons to suspect that this is not the complete description of physics at TeV energies.
The standard model describes how a collection of fundamental particles, which interacts with four forces (gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak forces), makes up everything in our universe. Developed in the early 1970s, this model follows from a set of symmetry principles to explain almost every high-energy experiment conducted.
Further details: Search for the totally unexpected from the LHC