It's been a tradition for 90 years now. Since first "high energy" particle accelerator in 1932, we have used particle accelerator to smash and study subatomic

It's been a tradition for 90 years now. Since first "high energy" particle accelerator in 1932, we have used particle accelerator to smash and study subatomic particles. First we found a whole zoo of them, but then 1961 Gell-Mann's quark model explained how all those subatomic particles are not elementary particles, but made of various combinations of quarks. From 1975 we've had the standard model of particle physics, and after 2012 with the experimental discovery of the Higgs boson, now we've found all the particles in the standard model. But the road up to 2012 was: Keep building bigger accelerators, keep adding more energy, keep finding new particles. Why stop now? Some skeptics say that now we have maybe found them all. And we don't have a good theory that would predict new particles, so maybe we won't find new elementary particles, no matter how we go on. Maybe we should pause and reconsider. Work on new theories. But, we also have theories: Supersymmetry, and string theory. Supersymmetry predicts the existence of the superpartners of all the 17 elementary particles. Maybe their discovery is just behind the corner, if we just keep going? Or maybe supersymmetry is wrong, and the superpartners don't exist at all. Timeline of discoveries of the elementary particles: 1800-1895 photon 1897 electron 1937 muon 1956 electron neutrino 1962 muon neutrino 1969 down quark 1969 strange quark 1969 up quark 1974 charm quark 1975 tau 1977 bottom quark 1979 gluon 1983 W boson 1983 Z boson 1995 top quark 2000 tau neutrino 2012 higgs