CERN’s Concept Design for Next-Gen ‘Supercollider’ Mirrors China’s Plans

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The world’s largest particle physics laboratory has unveiled its design options for the Large Hadron Collider’s successor – what is expected to be a 100-km long next generation ‘supercollider’.

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) submitted the conceptual design report for what it is calling the Future Circular Collider (FCC). The FCC is expected to be able to smash particles together at even higher intensities and push the boundaries of the study of elementary particles. CERN expects it can come online by 2040, when the Large Hadron Collider’s (LHC’s) final run will come to a close.

The LHC switched on in 2008. Its first primary goal was to look for the Higgs boson, a fundamental particle that gives all other fundamental particles their masses. The LHC found it four years. After that, physicists expected it would be able to find other particles they’ve been looking for to make sense of the universe. The LHC has not.

This forced physicists to confront alternative possibilities about where and how they could find these other hypothetical particles, or even if they existed. The FCC is expected to help by enabling a deeper and more precise examination of the world of particles. It will also help study the Higgs boson in much greater detail than the LHC allows, in the process understand its underlying theory better.

The CERN report on what the FCC could look like comes at an interesting time – when two supercollider designs are being considered in Asia. In November 2018, China unveiled plans for its Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC), a particle accelerator seven-times wider than the LHC.