CERN's New Collider Design Is Four Times Larger Than the LHC (vice.com)

If built, the Future Circular Collider will be 10 times more powerful than the Large Hadron Collider, and could discover new types of particles. From a report: The 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson particle at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is widely considered to be one of the most important scientific breakthroughs in history. It validated a half-century of research about the basic building blocks of matter, and remains the crowning achievement of modern particle physics. Now, CERN wants to follow up on the LHC's smashing success with a super-sized structure called the Future Circular Collider (FCC).

This next-generation particle accelerator would boast 10 times the observational power of the LHC and would stretch across 100 kilometers (62 miles), encircling the Swiss city of Geneva and much of the surrounding area. CERN published its first conceptual design report for the FCC on Tuesday. The four-volume roadmap was developed over five years by 1,300 contributors based at 150 universities, according to a statement.

Comments

Re:Two questions.

[spth]

Mexico is not a CERN member state, which pay most of the CERN budget.

While Mexico has a co-operation agreement with CERN, it (like most countries with observer status or co-operation agreements, which also includes the US, Russia and China) has apparently not contributed to the 2019 budget: https://fap-dep.web.cern.ch/rp...

Re:Two questions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering Europe doesn't throw billions worth of € in stupid military macho shit we've got the means to fund basic research on a grand scale. Less weapons, more science.

Re:Scienctists have a dream...

[crgrace]

I get what you're saying, and people have been making the same arguments since the very beginning. In fact, when Ernest Lawrence was trying to build his first cyclotron (and thus jumpstart high-energy physics) he asked the local power company (PG&E) for funds and they responded in a very similar way to your response. Luckily, Lawerence was able to get the money, a Nobel prize, and pave the way to a new era in team-based science.

To answer a couple of questions, you're right that it is unclear if a new collider would turn the physics world on its head. It would certianly produce large numbers of Higgs particles and therefore make studying the Higgs much easier. It could also rule out many potential string theories (and theories on supersymmetry). If it did find supersymmetric particles that would be earth-shattering, as it would overturn the current standard model and would hold the promise for un-imagined future technologies.

As for whether you need a larger collider, yes, basic high-school physics can show that only a larger diameter will let you further increase the energy at the interaction point (assuming a circular hadron collider).

Now, you ask is this worth investing in, instead of, say, biomedical or genetic research. I think this is a false dichotomy. The answer is we should invest in both and all. Besides increasing our knowledge of physics, accelerator research has led to a huge number of useful technologies that were invented along the way. For example, high energy physics were among the first "Big Data" applications and dealing with this data led to the World Wide Web. In addition, breakthroughs enabling digital cameras, clean energy, materials science, and bioimaging have been made possible in the last few decades based on experience gained building these kinds of accelerators. I think there are benefits here and this is work worth doing.

Re:Two questions.

[TechyImmigrant]

According to the article, the current cost estimate is 17 G$.

For comparison: That is 30% more than a Ford-class aircraft carrier, 40% more than the Gotthard Base Tunnel.

A heck of a lot less than a wall though.