Particle researchers outline a device over 90 kilometers long, with a price tag of several billions.
Imagine a circular tunnel whose southernmost point is at the Helsinki railway station. The northernmost is, for example, south of Järvenpää.
The perimeter measures more than 90 kilometers. By car, it would take an hour to go around it at normal speed.
Such outlines European Center for Particle Research Cern. A new particle accelerator, or collider, would be installed in the tunnel. It is needed, according to the project’s supporters, because particle physics needs it.
In the picture, FCC means the outlined new collider and LHC the current one. The yellow line is the border between Switzerland and France.
In the backgroundE it is also fitting that China is planning a collider about a hundred kilometers long. Its basic survey has been done. According to the Chinese researcher, construction could start in three years, he says South China Morning Post.
However, international cooperation with the Chinese in particle physics seems “a little tricky”, stated Cern’s CEO Fabiola Gianotti last week in Helsinki. He gave a presentation on the 70-year-old Cern research at Tiedekulma.
In that sense, Cern’s own giant collider would be necessary, of course also scientifically, according to the researchers. Basic investigation an interim report on the giant impact was published in February, but was not publicly shared. However, the terrain and rocks have been studied, and the report will be completed next year.
The FCC would pay according to the estimate more than 15 billion euros. About one hundred million euros are already spent on the preparation before a decision on the project may be made in the next few years. According to opponents the sums should be used for example the study of climate change and its harmsn.
Cern is in Geneva. On the border between Switzerland and France is the organization’s current collider LHC (Large Hadron Collider), which also has a circumference of 27 kilometers.
The LHC studies the fundamental nature of matter. When particles are collided at high speeds, other particles are created that are otherwise undetectable. The device’s big discovery was the Higgs particle in 2012. It is said to explain why particles have mass.
Since then, not one big new discovery has been reported.
Do you have to? the new collider project is taken seriously, director of the Institute of Physics Katri Huitu?
“Yes, in the sense that the prerequisites for the project will be investigated for around one hundred million euros,” says Huitu, who is on the Cern council.
“I am optimistic,” said Gianotti in a quick interview. He reminded that once upon a time in the 1980s the LHC project was also suspected to be “impossible”, but it was realized and has produced results.
“At the end of 2025, we will hopefully have a much better understanding of the price. You have to remember that the device would be built for years, so the costs would be spread over several years,” says Huitu.
According to him, the interim report did not present a problem that would make construction impossible. Billions would be paid by CERN’s twenty member states and partner countries.
The member states will decide in a few years whether to build the FCC. If built, the launch could be in the 2040s with the lighter particles electrons and their antiparticle positrons.
Then, maybe in the 2070s, protons would be collided with high energies, like now in the LHC but much more efficiently. The drive would continue until the end of the century.
Huge one goal of the device would be to verify the nature of the Higgs particle.
“The stability of the entire universe may depend on it,” says Huitu.
Namely, if the Higgs mass is currently known, the universe may not be stable. The universe could collapse unpredictably if the Higgs mass settled down to its “correct level” at some point. From there, the destruction would spread at the speed of light.
The Higgs mechanism still has a lot to figure out, as well as the big bang, the lost antimatter and the mass of neutrinos, summarizes the professor Mikko Voutilainenwho studies the Higgs at Cern.
And the destruction of the universe hasn’t been announced yet, he reassures.
Second an important research subject is dark matter. Only five percent of matter is visible matter, of which we are also composed. There is five times as much dark matter. The invisible particle obeys the force of gravity by which it has been observed in astronomy.
Current experiments are not enough to look for a dark matter particle. However, there are modelson the basis of which the energy of the particle would be achievable with FCC.
The puzzle is still that the only thing known about a dark matter particle is that it is affected by gravity. But even the mass is not known.
One of Cern’s justifications for the project is also that there are still “unknown unknowns” in physics.
“This is impossible to know. Something may be around the corner, but the best opportunities for a new understanding are obtained if the energy is as high as possible,” says Huitu.
Current the collider works like this. In the device, particles fly in tubes in vacuum in opposite directions towards collisions. In the bigger ring of the giant collider, the particles would collide with greater energy.
The jets of particles are guided by extremely cold magnets. There are measuring stations the size of apartment buildings along the perimeter. They describe the collisions of particles that create other particles.
There are tens of millions of collisions per second, but maybe a thousand are recorded. The result can be, after a very extensive computer run, new physics or refinements to the old.
Read more: It’s been more than ten years since the discovery of the Higgs particle, and no new breakthroughs have been seen – Is particle research at the end of the road?
