Cern Aims To Build $21 Billion Collider To Unlock Secrets of Universe

Researchers at Cern have submitted plans for a next-generation particle accelerator that's at least three times the size of the Large Hadron Collider. The Guardian reports: The Large Hadron Collider, built inside a 27km circular tunnel beneath the Swiss-French countryside, smashes together protons and other subatomic particles at close to the speed of light to recreate the conditions that existed fractions of a second after the big bang. The machine, the world's largest collider, was used in the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, nearly 50 years after the particle was proposed by Peter Higgs, the theoretical physicist at the University of Edinburgh, and several other researchers. The feat was honored with the Nobel prize in physics the following year.

But since the discovery of the Higgs boson, the collider has not revealed any significant new physics that might shed light on some of the deepest mysteries of the universe, such as the nature of dark matter or dark energy, why matter dominates over antimatter, and whether reality is permeated with hidden extra dimensions. Cern drew up plans for the next machine, the Future Circular Collider (FCC), in 2019. The $21.5 billion (20 billion euro) machine would have a 91km circumference and aim to smash subatomic particles together at a maximum energy of 100 teraelectronvolts (TeV). The Large Hadron Collider achieves maximum energies of 14TeV.

On Friday, the Cern council discussed a midterm review of a feasibility study for the FCC. If the plans go ahead, the organization would ask for approval in the next five years and hope to have the machine built and ready for operations in the 2040s when the LHC has completed its runs. Prof Fabiola Gianotti, the director general of Cern, said: 'If approved, the FCC would be the most powerful microscope ever built to study the laws of nature at the smallest scales and highest energies, with the goal of addressing some of the outstanding questions in today's fundamental physics and our understanding of the universe.'

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