CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research whose main offices also straddle the border near Geneva, seeks to unravel what the universe is made of and how it works.
The LHC is expected to have fully run its course by around 2040, and CERN is considering building a far larger collider to allow scientists to keep pushing the boundaries of knowledge.
Search for dark matter
The planned Future Circular Collider (FCC) would be a ring with a circumference of 91 km and an average depth of 200 metres.
Scientists believe that ordinary matter — such as stars, gases, dust, planets and everything on them — accounts for just five percent of the universe.
The FCC will try to reveal what makes up the other 95 percent of the energy and matter in the universe — so-called dark matter and dark energy, which scientists have yet to observe directly.
The gigantic project, costing around $17 billion, has not yet received the green light from CERN’s 25 member states.
But the CERN Council, its decision-making body, “issued a very positive opinion on November 7” regarding the feasibility study, which includes geological, territorial, technological, scientific, and financial aspects, announced Gianotti.
“If all goes well, the project could be approved in 2028,” she added.
The FCC, which could become operational by the end of the 2040s, is considered excessive by its opponents, especially if China was doing similar research in a similar-sized ring at a cheaper price.
But China’s halt gives CERN a clear run.
Window of opportunity
“The Chinese Academy of Sciences, which filters projects, has decided to give the green light to a smaller, lower-energy collider, rather than the larger CEPC, which is in direct competition with CERN,” said Gianotti.
In China, Wang Yifang, head of the Institute of High Energy Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, confirmed to AFP that the CEPC was not included in the next five-year plan.
“We plan to submit CEPC for consideration again in 2030, unless FCC is officially approved before then, in which case we will seek to join FCC, and give up CEPC,” he said.
For Gianotti, “this is an opportunity: firstly, because if the Chinese project had been approved, it would likely have started much sooner than the FCC.”
