Plans for new Future Circular Collider are being drawn up by CERN. For nine billion Euros it should be one hundred kilometers long.
Julian Herzog (Website) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons
CERN wants to build a new super-collider. And if all goes as planned the current largest super-collider – Large Hadron Collider – will look like a tiny dwarf. And maybe Elon Musk will come along for the ride.
The Large Hadron Collider is the current largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world. It started its life on the tenth of September 2008 and is located in Switzerland. It is installed in a circular tunnel 27 kilometers long.
The LHC helped us discover many important things – most famously the Higgs-Boson – but even with its planned upgrades it will not be enough for the needs of future scientists. That is why current scientist say we will need something bigger and more powerful.
At the moment the project is called the Future Circular Collider (FCC). The first concept has been published on the fifteenth of January and the core parameters and the abilities of the project are currently being drawn up. The new accelerator should allow us to collide particles at previously unheard energies.
The FCC should be – similarly to the LHC – in an underground tunnel but this time its length will be between 80 and 100 kilometers. The predicted costs are around nine billion Euros just to build and another 15 billion in additional investments. And if all goes according to plan it should start its life in 2040.
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