Research lab submits plans for next-generation model at least three times size of Large Hadron Collider

Officials at Cern, home to the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, are pressing ahead with plans for a new machine that would be at least three times bigger than the existing particle accelerator.

The Large Hadron Collider, built inside a 27km circular tunnel beneath the Swiss-French countryside, smashes together protons and other subatomic particles at close to the speed of light to recreate the conditions that existed fractions of a second after the big bang.

The machine, the world’s largest collider, was used in the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, nearly 50 years after the particle was proposed by Peter Higgs, the theoretical physicist at the University of Edinburgh, and several other researchers. The feat was honoured with the Nobel prize in physics the following year.

  • Chainweasel
    link
    English
    6211 months ago

    €20 Billion isn’t really all that much for a particle accelerator that can be used for more than a decade when you consider the US plans to spend $842 billion on just the military this year.

    • TxzK
      link
      fedilink
      1911 months ago

      Yeah but finding more efficient ways to kill people is more important than this science stuff obviously

      • @Grimy
        link
        1111 months ago

        That’s a really simplistic view. The military isn’t just a killing machine, we get oil fields out of it too.

        • Sabata11792
          link
          fedilink
          311 months ago

          They just have to put that in the paperwork to secure the military funding.

    • Sagrotan
      link
      211 months ago

      BS! I found my used particle accelerator for under 100 bucks on Craigslist. I’m sending nano scale black holes over to my asshole neighbor since.