Bigger And Faster: Large Hadron Collider’s Successor
- Editor OGN Daily
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
The Future Circular Collider is a proposed 56.5 miles particle collider designed to succeed CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in the 2040s.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a collaborative endeavour supported by over 100 countries, was completed in 2008. It is a circular particle collider 16.7 miles (27 km) in circumference, lying 175m (574ft) beneath the Swiss-France border near Geneva. It was developed to assist physicists in exploring both recognized and uncharted theories in particle physics. In its run, its greatest achievement was the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle in 2012.
Now, however, scientists say that it needs to be upgraded in order to be able to extend fundamental physics research beyond the capabilities of the LHC, CERN’s current flagship instrument. Hence, the proposal for the Future Hadron Collider (FCC).
The FCC is expected to have a circumference of 56.5 miles (91 km), over three times that of the LHC. The ring-shaped underground tunnel would be located 200m (656ft) under the Swiss-France region.
CERN plans to unfold the project in two stages. The first involves an electron-positron collider called FCC-ee, where electrons will collide with their antimatter counterparts, positrons. This stage will concentrate on precision measurements that might expose subtle differences from the Standard Model.
The second stage is a proton-proton collider called the FCC-hh, using the same tunnel but different equipment. The collisions would occur at energies nearly eight times those seen in the LHC.
With the higher energies, the potential exists to uncover heavier particles that the LHC couldn’t create. They also enable the study of dark matter components and physics at energy scales previously unattainable by human-made experiments.
The construction for the FCC is expected to begin in the 2030s - and cost tens of billions -
after a decision is reached by the CERN Member States and international partners.
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