CERN has responded in new reports to suggestions that its proposed Future Circular Collider (FCC) is not technologically feasible, suggesting that the project’s aims to delve further into the mysteries of the universe are attainable.
CERN operates the largest machine on Earth – the 27-kilometre, ring-shaped Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the particle accelerator used to examine the fundamental nature of the particles and forces which form the universe.
In 2012, experiments at the LHC led to the discovery of the Higgs boson – the “God particle” responsible for giving all other particles their mass.
Schematic map showing a possible location collider
A schematic map showing a possible location for the Future Circular Collider. Credit: CERN.
It is now proposed that the FCC will be built in the 2040s. It would have a circumference more than 3 times that of the LHC, at 91km. Like the LHC, the FCC would be built near the Swiss-French border at Geneva. The LHC is 100m below the surface. The FCC would be 200m deep on average.
It would allow particles to be smashed together at energies 8 times greater than at the LHC. Coupled with more sensitive detectors, the FCC could help discover new particles and solve some of the biggest cosmic questions, including what is the nature of dark matter?
Building the FCC is estimated to cost about US$17 billion. Overflow energy will be used to heat towns like Ferney-Voltaire – one of 7 surface sites planned on the French side of the FCC.
The new feasibility reports are published on CERN’s website. They analyse 100 different scenarios to conclude that the 91km-long machine could be built and sustained, and would yield new scientific information.
But some have raised concerns about the project, however.
Speaking with global news agency AFP, one dairy farmer in France says the planned collider would swallow “5 hectares of our farm”.
Physicist Olivier Cepas of the Neel Institute at France’s University of Grenoble tells AFP: “The financial, ecological, and operating costs are astronomical. t would be better to fund smaller scientific projects.”
The project’s backers say that, if the FCC is not built in Europe, then projects like it will emerge in other parts of the world, particularly China.
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