CERN seeks €20B to build a bigger, faster, particle accelerator
- Reference: 1707204547
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/02/06/cern_dark_matter_accelerator_proposal/
- Source link:
The proposed Future Circular Collider (FCC) in Switzerland and France would have a circumference of over 90 kilometers and collide protons at energies of 100 teraelectronvolts (TeV), compared to the 14 TeV achieved by the lab's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In a report to CERN's council, made up of representatives from the organization's 23 member states, officials detailed the FCC proposal, and sought approval for work to begin on the accelerator in the next five years.
Scientists supporting this ambitious project want to start building sooner rather than later so the FCC is ready to start operating when the LHC ends its experimental runs in the 2040s.
[1]
CERN's depiction of the FCC, with comparison to the LHC. Source: CERN - click to enlarge
"The FCC will not only be a wonderful instrument to improve our understanding of fundamental laws of physics and of nature," CERN director general Fabiola Gianotti said during a Monday briefing. "It will also be a driver of innovation," she added, [2]according to The Financial Times .
Not everyone is onboard with Gianotti's vision, however. Some experts believe the €20 billion (£17.1 billion, $21.5 billion) price tag does not represent value for money and that the funds could be spent more wisely on research that addresses diseases or climate change. Sir David King, a chemist and a former chief scientific advisor for the British government, called the project "reckless" in an interview.
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"When the world is faced with threats from the climate emergency, would it not be wiser to channel these research funds into the endeavors to create a manageable future?" he [4]asked the BBC.
[5]CERN swells storage space beyond 1EB for LHC's latest ion-whacking experiments
[6]CERN experiment proves gravity pulls antimatter the way Einstein predicted
[7]CERN swaps out databases to feed its petabyte-a-day habit
[8]CERN spots Higgs boson decay breaking the rules
Others reckon the FCC is risky because it might not lead to any new breakthroughs. The LHC is best known for confirming theories that predicted the existence of the Higgs boson, a fundamental particle proposed in 1964 by a team of physicists. They came up with the idea of the Higgs field – a fundamental field that permeates all of space, and gives particles mass.
Scientists have performed further experiments following the confirmation of the Higgs boson in 2012, but haven't since achieved anything to compare with that finding, leading some to question whether it's worth plowing more resources into CERN.
[9]
Gianotti, however, believes new physics discoveries will only be revealed if subatomic particles are smashed together at higher speeds, which requires a larger and more powerful accelerator. Data collected from future experiments could map the properties of the Higgs boson to study how particles like electrons, muons, and quarks gained mass shortly after the Big Bang.
Learning more about dark matter is another hoped-for outcome. The FCC could rule out whether dark matter comes from a class of particles known as WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles), [10]according to physicists who support the €20B project. ®
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[1] https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/02/05/supplied_cern_fcc_vs_lhc.jpg
[2] https://www.ft.com/content/8818373d-87e1-43e9-ba0e-2851c4f17bd8
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZcIRWhEIf6kVi0iAxoOhOQAAABQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68172162
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/02/cern_storage_exabyte/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/27/cern_experiment_proves_gravity_pulls/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/18/lhc_infrastructure_monitoring/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/30/newly_observed_higgs_boson_decay/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZcIRWhEIf6kVi0iAxoOhOQAAABQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjc/s10052-019-6904-3
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: But is Dark Matter real?
It does sound a bit like the Copernicans raising cash for a bigger, better orrery with even more epicycles.
Re: surely it would make more sense
This is Science. It makes sense to discover everything we can, and who knows what we'll discover if we crank it up to 11 ?
Until hypermatter reactors are a common thing, I say we need to up the ante. Go for it. Collide at insane speeds and see what comes of it.
If we don't try, we'll never know what we missed.
Priorities
"When the world is faced with threats from the climate emergency, would it not be wiser to channel these research funds into the endeavours to create a manageable future?" Let's build one less nuclear submarine and have both, eh?
Re: Priorities
Absolutely. I'm utterly fed up of the "but what about..." arguments for any science funding. Space exploration gets battered by it too. There are always "better" things to spend money on. Curing cancer, ending poverty, etc etc.
Meanwhile, the world collectively spends around $2.2 trillion annually on various militaries. The US contributing 40% of that alone. As you say, perhaps for just one year they could spend $2.18 trillion instead. They could even spend $2.119 trillion over the next 20 years if it's easier - call it $2.2 for simplicity.
Sir David King, a chemist and a former chief scientific advisor for the British government, called the project "reckless" in an interview.
Sure £17.1 billion is a lot even for a group of nations, but even the grand total is less than the impact to the UK of having Liz Truss do a single budget...
He's just a chemist with physics envy.
the impact to the UK of having Liz Truss do a single budget...
Probably the first budget ever that has collapsed multiple currencies and bond markets around the world, before even it has been implemented.
That's impressive.
Best name?
I feel an El Reg poll coming, as "Future Circular Collider" is not really that exciting, nor does it lend itself to puerile puns. I would vote for Harder Hadron Collider, but maybe the legion of commentards have better suggestions?
Re: Best name?
I fear a lot of puzzled looks on the faces of government apparatchiks being asked for funding, when they wonder why it's so expensive to collide Hard-ons!
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
The 5upergiant 5ircular 5ern 5masher
Re: Best name?
To be fair, Family Guy have already got a great song ready to go. I would happily sign-up to calling it the Freakin' FCC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu6K6uclU54
Re: Best name?
The BFC and the middle word ends with off.
Black hole time!!!
Hi guys.... so, the LHC didn't create a black hole, so we're going for something bigger!!
Nice aerial depiction of where the proposed tunnel would run, for anyone who knows the area, it gives a good idea of just how massive the scale of that proposed FCC thing is. (Annecy, pictured on the far right, is a 40-minute drive from Geneva!!)
And if they need help with the funding, maybe they can do a joint venture with the Canton of Geneva to finally have a road tunnel under the lake instead of relying almost exclusively on 2 2-lane bridges to get all the traffic over the Rhone and/or Lake Geneva!
Re: Black hole time!!!
> (Annecy, pictured on the far right, is a 40-minute drive from Geneva!!)
Not with the Geneva traffic it's not!
Re: Black hole time!!!
Yeah, the 40 min is just on the motorway! From the centre of Geneva you need to add half an hour to get to the motorway (that, at least, was the case around 10 years ago, and since they voted against a new bridge or tunnel around that time, and number of cars could only have increased, I figure it's probably worse now). Unless you did as I used to do, which is motorbike + filter through car traffic*
*I get that car drivers sometimes get pissed at scooter/bike riders filtering through, but if even half of those riders were driving cars instead, the city would come to a standstill!!
Re: Black hole time!!!
With a tunnel that scale, the underground transport will be considered. To have road and or rail systems so EVs can move people around. Currently they use bicycles and little vehicles similar to those mobility cars for people who unable to walk far.
£17.1bn
could be spent more wisely on research that addresses diseases or climate change
Yay £17.1bn spending on straightening the hockey sticks of doom. The scientific community should seek to flush out charlatans from their ranks as the man-made climate change peddlers undermine trust in science and turn it into $cience beauty contest. Who can create more fear and bring in more sweet sweet grants?
I'll be honest...
This kind of makes it sound like researchers are running out of things to do.
Credits to [1]The Onion
[1] https://www.theonion.com/scientists-create-ultra-hot-superionic-black-ice-1848261339
But is Dark Matter real?
There seems to be a fundamental assumption in Gianotti's statement that Dark Matter actually exists. While the consensus is that it does, there is a significant minority view that it's our understanding of Gravity that is incomplete, and recently that view has gained strength. There is the persistent gap between different estimates of the Hubble Constant from different methodologies, and the difference exceeds the experimental error of either technique. I may be garbling things, but I am a geologist and data nerd, not a cosmologist! But surely it would make more sense to work on investigations like the LISA probe and astrometric measurements than try to bang things together harder when we don't have a theoretical basis for doing so.