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Physicists on experiments at the Large Hadron Collider have observed a new Higgs-like particle. Joe Incandela answers the question: What happens next?

It''s a challenging time for particle physics in the United States. The outlook for federal spending for physics research—indeed for all of science—is uncertain.

I got involved in particle accelerators as a graduate student because I wanted to work in an area that had the potential to have a positive impact on people's lives in 10 to 20 years.

As I sat in secondary-school physics lessons, I couldn't wait for it all to be over. My interest in physics had been diluted to homeopathic levels by rote learning and mindless calculations. I was ready to give up and become a medic.

When I began my professional life as a civil engineer, I thought that I would spend my career building bridges. As it turned out, that's what I'm doing—only the bridges that I help build are very different from those I studied in engineering school.

These are extraordinary times for particle physics, remarkable not only for the scientific discoveries that could be in store, but also for the very real opportunities to address critical issues confronting our nation.

What inspired you in physics? Was it the curriculum at school? For me it was a lecture about Mars that Carl Sagan gave at the Royal Institution; it was 1977, and he invited the audience—I was watching on the TV—to have tea with him on Mars.

Some areas of the world are underrepresented in the atlas of particle physics, notably sub-Saharan Africa.

In September 2009, I began my new assignment as director of the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, the biggest underground laboratory in the world devoted to neutrino and astroparticle physics.

I am not a physicist, scientist, or any other “ist” that I can think of, but Fermilab has been a recurring theme in my life. It began as an interesting footnote back when my husband and I became a couple, and unexpectedly jumped back into our lives 31 years later.

In a recent commentary ("Bosons and grocery bags", symmetry May 09), Fermilab Director Pier Oddone pointed out that most Americans don't recognize accelerators, such as those used for medical therapy, as valuable by-products of particle physics research. I would like to suggest that people are even less aware of the impact one particular class of accelerators has on the economy and on our quality of life. These are commonly known as industrial accelerators.

When I was a kid, I used to watch animations on TV and read Manga magazines a lot. As you can imagine, my parents were not very enthusiastic about it at all. "Benkyo shinasai!" meaning "Study hard (rather than wasting time on such things)!" was their automatic, second-nature scolding.

From the beginning, science and communication have been connected. Writing is a good exercise for inquiring minds; this is not just a saying, but a fact. If you look at scientific biographies, you probably will find mention of a notebook in which the scientist writes down ideas, questions, and quick observations. Those notes give us a perspective on what the scientist was doing at the time.

In a March 1 Op-Ed piece in the New London Day, former Connecticut Congressman Bob Simmons raised concerns about provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the so-called stimulus bill.

In high school, I was singularly focused on building a life in math, physics, and philosophy. I was drawn to the purity of ideas, their remoteness from everyday life. I wanted to be elevated from the mundane.

Can physics rock you in the head? Or destroy the world? These aren''t the kinds of questions you usually associate with particle accelerators. But over the past year, such questions have drawn the attention of millions of viewers and readers to particle physics in general, and Europe's Large Hadron Collider in particular.

A good portion of the public is curious about what is going on in particle physics right now, and we have an ever-longer list of ways for them to find out—from lab newsletters to personal blogs, popular-level magazines, and plain-language Web sites.

Ask any physicist: The most common question we hear from family/friends/random strangers in the next seat on the plane is, “What is it, exactly, that you do?” I have even been asked straight up, “High-energy physics? Is that a real job?”