The Big Questions in Elementary Particle Physics

Whenever our basic understanding of the fundamental laws of physics improves, when more unified formalisms are uncovered, these advances are branded by subtle reformulations of the so-called Big Questions. More understanding comes with new questions, asked in a better way than before. When the renormalisation procedure for quantum field theories was finally unravelled, theoreticians realised that these gave new views on how the basic forces among elementary particles all could have a common, unified, origin. One elementary quantum field model stood out, which was dubbed the ‘Standard Model’, and the question was asked to what extent this model could describe all we know. Are there physical phenomena that suggest further improvement? Such questions could be asked to experimenters, but also from a purely theoretical point of view, one could ask what shortcomings the model has and what strategy should be followed to find better pathways. This paper briefly reviews some Big Questions of the past and asks how to use our deepest insights to rephrase the questions of the present.