The FCC would form a new circular tunnel under France and Switzerland.
Europe’s CERN laboratory on Monday revealed more details of its plans for a giant new particle accelerator that would dwarf the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), stepping up its efforts to uncover the underlying secrets of the universe.
If approved, the Future Circular Collider (FCC) would begin smashing its first particles around the middle of this century and trigger its highest energy collisions around 2070.
Placed under the responsibility of France and Switzerland, it would be more than three times the length of CERN’s LHC, currently the largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
The idea behind both is to send particles spinning around a ring to collide with them at close to the speed of light, so that the collisions reveal their true nature.
Among other discoveries, the LHC made history in 2012 when it allowed scientists to observe the Higgs boson for the first time.
But the LHC, which cost $5.6 billion and began operating in 2010, is expected to reach completion around 2040.
The faster and more powerful FCC would allow scientists to continue pushing the boundaries. They hope this could confirm the existence of other particles – the building blocks of matter – which until now have only been theorized.
Another unfinished business for science is determining exactly what 95% of the universe is made of. About 68% of the universe is thought to be made up of dark energy and 27% is dark matter – both remain a complete mystery.
Another unknown is why there is so little antimatter in the universe compared to matter.
CERN hopes that a massive improvement in humanity’s ability to break apart particles could shed light on these puzzles and more.
“Our goal is to study the properties of matter at the smallest scale and at the highest energy,” CERN Director General Fabiola Gianotti said while presenting an interim report in Geneva.
The report presents initial findings from an FCC feasibility study that will be finalized by 2025.
17 billion dollars for the first stage
In 2028, CERN member states, including the United Kingdom and Israel, will decide whether or not to implement this plan.
If the green light is given, construction of the collider would begin in 2033.
The project is divided into parts.
In 2048, the “electron-positron” collider would begin smashing up light particles, aiming to further study the Higgs boson and the so-called weak force, one of the four fundamental forces.
The cost of the tunnel, infrastructure and first stage of the collider would be around 15 billion Swiss francs ($17 billion), Gianotti said.
The powerful hadron collider, which would smash protons together, would not come online until 2070.
Its energy target would be 100,000 billion electronvolts, beating the LHC record of 13,600 billion.
Gianotti said this latest collider is the “only machine” that would allow humanity “to take a big step forward in the study of matter.”
After eight years of study, the configuration chosen for the FCC was a new circular tunnel 90.7 kilometers (56.5 miles) long and 5.5 meters (feet) in diameter.
The tunnel, which would connect to the LHC, would pass beneath the Geneva region and its namesake lake in Switzerland, and loop south, near the picturesque French town of Annecy.
Eight technical and scientific sites would be built on the surface.
CERN said it was consulting with areas along the route and planned to carry out impact studies on how the tunnel would affect the area.
© 2024 AFP
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