Science & Technology

Next hadron collider to be four times larger

By T.K. Randall
January 16, 2019

Image: CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Tunnel
Credit: Julian Herzog / CC BY-SA 3.0 (adapted) Built between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with more than 10,000 scientists and engineers from around the world, the Large Hadron Collider - officially the world's largest machine - consists of a ring approximately 27km in circumference which is situated near Geneva, Switzerland.

Now scientists have started to look ahead to the atom smasher's successor - a monster of a particle accelerator that will be four times as large and ten times as powerful.

Known tentatively as the Future Circular Collider (FCC), the new facility will take two or three decades to complete, but will have the potential to open up whole new fields of particle physics.

While the proposal still needs to be approved by an international panel of particle physicists, it has been described as "very exciting" and there appears to be a lot of enthusiasm for it.CERN's Director-General Prof Fabiola Gianotti has described it as "a remarkable accomplishment."

"It shows the tremendous potential of the FCC to improve our knowledge of fundamental physics and to advance many technologies with a broad impact on society," she said.

Others, however, have expressed concern over the high cost of such an endeavour as well as the potential unintended side effects of smashing particles at such extreme power levels.

As things stand, it remains to be seen whether or not the project will actually go ahead as planned.

Source: BBC News

Tags: Large Hadron Collider