Studies that test some physical property to an extreme precision are gaining in popularity these days because many physicists are intently looking for small chinks – too small for them to have noticed without a closer look – in a theory that is both powerful yet incomplete. This is the Standard Model of particle physics.
It predicts the existence of different particles; the last of them to be found was the Higgs boson, in 2012. But while the Model is incomplete, its zoo of particles and their combined interactions haven’t been able to explain many things about nature and the universe. For example, the Model doesn’t say what dark matter is and can’t explain dark energy. It doesn’t know why the Higgs boson is so heavy or why gravity is so much weaker than the other fundamental forces.
