The long journey to the Higgs boson and beyond at the LHC (with Highlights from ATLAS)

Since 2010 the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) investigate particle physics at the highest collision energies ever achieved in a laboratory. Following a rich harvest of results for Standard Model physics came in summer 2012 the first spectacular discovery by the ATLAS and CMS experiments observing a new, heavy particle which is most likely the long-awaited Higgs boson, fundamental to the understanding of Nature in its smallest components. All the subsequent data point strongly to the properties as expected for the boson associated with the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism postulated to explain the spontaneous symmetry breaking observed for the electroweak forces, and thereby to explain how elementary particles acquire mass. Building up the experimental program with this unique high-energy collider, and developing the very sophisticated detectors built and operated by world-wide collaborations, meant an incredible scientific and human adventure spanning now three decades. And this is only the beginning of this fantastic journey into unchartered physics territory. The LHC has resumed in 2015 its operation at even higher collision energy, with the exciting prospects to elucidate the mystery of Dark Matter in the Universe, which could be related to a theoretically proposed overarching symmetry in particle physics, called Supersymmetry (SUSY).