An approaching revolution in the understanding of the most basic physical laws governing the Universe will bring some 600 physicists and engineers to an intensive two-week workshop in Snowmass, Colorado, US from 14 to 27 August. The global particle physics community has proposed designing and building a new particle accelerator, the International Linear Collider (ILC). The ILC would have the potential to address such fundamental scientific issues as the origin of mass, the nature of dark matter and dark energy, the existence of extra dimensions, and the joining of nature's disparate forces into a single unified force. At the '2005 International Linear Collider (ILC) physics and detectors workshop and the second ILC accelerator workshop', scientists from Asia, Europe and North America will collaborate on the science and technology behind the proposed next-generation particle accelerator. 'Discoveries at the next generation of particle accelerators will fundamentally change our current picture of the universe,' said physicist Barry Barish, director of the Global Design Effort (GDE) for the ILC.

'The Snowmass workshop will focus the combined efforts of hundreds of scientists from around the world on all aspects of the proposed ILC. It will be a key step in forging the worldwide effort to design a machine that will address the greatest mysteries of the Universe at a cost the world can afford.' The proposed ILC and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), an accelerator now under construction at CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, in Geneva, Switzerland, would create particle collisions at Tera-electron-volt energies, beyond the reach of today's accelerators.

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They don't say much about the nature of this 'revolution'... just the means of achieving it.

If I recall, the ILC is linear because they will be colliding electrons.
That's tricky with ring-type accelerator, because electrons don't negotiate
curves too easily. The LHC is a whopping 20 or thirty milles long, but circular, and it has several dectectors of different types along the ring. The LHC will be smashing heavy lead nuclei- protons.

They are really sounding PR optimistic. They will not get all they want, of course, and will demand an even larger set of colliders in another 15 years. In the meantime, they will produce some great effects, like possible miniature black holes, along with thousands of exotic short-lived particles.

The end goal is to heat up quarks, to see if they can find the ultimate transition particle- Higgs-Boson. Surprises will be in store over the next several years.
They have to work fast, because these devices wear out in a few years, and then require money for an overhaul.