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.
Now I’m all for smashing atoms and the LHC did a grand job with the Higgs. However are we sure just smashing things harder is going to be as revelatory as other things we could spend the money on? What other grand physics instruments could we build? For example LISA will be a massive step change in our gravitational detection capabilities?
Discovery is valuable even if it doesn’t have immediate engineering applications. Much of our understanding of physics and the standard model has come from just smashing things together with higher and higher energy levels.
Yeah it’s valuable, but is it really the best value for our money?
Considering really the only difference between peaceful prosperous modernity and the barbarity our ancestors experienced is technology, yes.
