Scientists at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, have unveiled ambitious plans for a colossal new atom smasher, the Future Circular Collider (FCC).
This proposed successor to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) would be a nearly 56.5-mile (91-kilometre) loop, dwarfing the LHC and even venturing beneath Lake Geneva along the French-Swiss border.
A detailed study released on Monday outlined key aspects of the FCC, including its proposed path, environmental impact, scientific goals, and estimated cost.
The project, roughly a decade in the making, is projected to cost around 14 billion Swiss francs (about £12.3 billion) and would commence in the mid-2040s, pending approval from CERN's 24 member countries (all European, except for Israel) in 2028.
Before then, independent experts will review the proposal.
CERN officials emphasise the potential for groundbreaking scientific discoveries that could revolutionise fields like cryogenics, superconducting magnets, and vacuum technologies, ultimately benefiting humanity.
External experts highlight the possibility of gaining deeper insights into the Higgs boson, the elusive particle that sheds light on the formation of matter after the Big Bang.
“This set of reports represents an important milestone in the process, but a full sense of the likelihood of it being brought to fruition will only be known through careful studies by scientists, engineers and others, including politicians who must make difficult decisions at time when uncertainty rules the day,” said Dave Toback, a professor of physics and astronomy at Texas A&M University, in an e-mail.
The new collider “provides and exciting opportunity for the particle physics community, and indeed all of physics, on the world stage”, said Toback, who was not affiliated with the study, and who worked for years at the Fermilab Tevatron collider in the United States that was shut down in 2011.
For roughly a decade, top minds at CERN have been cooking up plans for a successor to the Large Hadron Collider, a network of magnets that accelerate particles through a 17-mile (27km) underground tunnel and slams them together at velocities approaching the speed of light.
Work at the particle collider confirmed in 2013 the existence of the Higgs boson, the central piece in a puzzle known as the standard model that helps explains some fundamental forces in the universe.
CERN scientists, engineers and partners behind the study considered at least 100 different scenarios for the new collider before coming up with the proposed 56-mile circumference at an average depth of 656 feet (200 metres).
The tunnel would be about 16 feet (five metres) in diameter, CERN said.
“Ultimately what we would like to do is a collider which will come up with 10 times more energy than what we have today," said Arnaud Marsollier, a CERN spokesman.
“When you have more energy, then you can create particles that are heavier.”
A bigger collider would also offer greater precision to help plumb particularities of the Higgs boson, which “we have kind of a blurry image of” now, he added.
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