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Science

CERN Wants a New Particle Collider Three Times Larger Than the LHC 238

Posted by Soulskill from the showing-the-higgs-boson-who's-boss dept.
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Not content with the 27-kilometer-round Large Hadron Collider, researchers at CERN have their sights set on a new beast of a particle collider that could have a circumference of 80 to 100 kilometers. The nuclear research organization announced that it was hatching plans for an ambitious successor to the LHC with an international study called the Future Circular Colliders program, which will kick off with a meeting next week. The idea is to consider different hadron collider designs similar to the existing LHC but more powerful — much more powerful. CERN wrote it was looking for a collider 'capable of reaching unprecedented energies in the region of 100 TeV.' The existing LHC will reach a maximum of around 14 TeV."
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CERN Wants a New Particle Collider Three Times Larger Than the LHC More

CERN Wants a New Particle Collider Three Times Larger Than the LHC

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  • Sounds great (Score:5, Funny)

    by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Friday February 07, 2014 @05:22PM (#46189817) Homepage

    But before they use that collider they'll want to get it out of Beta first.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by roman_mir ( 125474 )

      The idea is to consider different hadron collider designs similar to the existing LHC but more powerful â" much more powerful.

      - The new LHC is actually designed with the ability to turn Beta into a black hole.

    • Re:Sounds great (Score:4, Informative)

      by Cylix ( 55374 ) on Friday February 07, 2014 @05:44PM (#46190037) Homepage Journal

      We can use the blackholes generated by the super sized collider to wipe out beta once and for all.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BrentWM ( 320879 )

      CERN is bored with the old sub-atomic particles and wants a redesign that attracts new particles from more profitable demographics.

  • Hopefully they beta test it... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 07, 2014 @05:25PM (#46189843)

    so all of the old LHC users can complain about the new LHC

  • LHC didn't destroy the Unvierse? (Score:5, Funny)

    by eexaa ( 1252378 ) on Friday February 07, 2014 @05:25PM (#46189849) Homepage

    OK, let's build bigger one!

    • Eventually we will be able to use the old one as a subway around the entire planet.

      • Eventually we will be able to use the old one as a subway around the entire planet.

        Why not just go for that now.. What are we wasting all this time shooting for 100 TeV, what about a relativistic bending 1 Million TeV . Heck, why not just put one in solar orbit where size would be less of a problem and you could avoid all the vacuum chambers, pumps and the cost of digging the tunnel.

        • Once it needs to be longer than the circumference of the earth, we will have a super bad ass space station.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by khallow ( 566160 )

          Heck, why not just put one in solar orbit where size would be less of a problem and you could avoid all the vacuum chambers, pumps and the cost of digging the tunnel.

          Because that would mean with our current almost non-existent infrastructure that all of it would have to be put up from Earth at several thousand dollars per kg. For example, the LHC has a staff of somewhere between hundreds to over a thousand (I can't find numbers for it, but CERN itself, has just under four thousand employees, full time and part time).

          Just looking at the mass of space stations per crew member, I get that the ISS has 75 metric tons per crew member of mass and Mir had about 44 metric ton

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by afidel ( 530433 )

            would be around 10,000 metric tons or tens of billions of dollars just in launch costs.
            Or a rounding error in the US and Chinese annual defense budget, it's not that we can't do ambitious things, it's that we choose not to.

        • Re:LHC didn't destroy the Unvierse? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Charliemopps ( 1157495 ) on Friday February 07, 2014 @06:46PM (#46190785)

          I can't find the source right now, but the LHC is built on top of an older smaller collider, which is also built on top of an even older, smaller one... Each increase in size is defined by a specific math formula that states the increase in size is exponential. I'm not sure how many more upgrades they could still do and remain on earth but I believe it was 2 BEFORE the LHC. So this next upgrade is likely the largest that can be built on earth, the next upgrade after that would be around the orbit of the moon or so, and then after that the entire solar system. I believe I saw this on a Ted Talk prior to the LHC coming on-line.

        • I can't help but wonder if there isn't a better (read efficient/economical) way to achieve the same thing without these sprawling accelerator loops. Even something as stupid as firing the particles around the loop a few times. I'm sure it would be technically hard, but is it harder than obtaining these increasingly larger colliders?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by pjt33 ( 739471 )

            Full marks for coming up with a workable idea, but I'm afraid you've been beaten to the punch: they already send the particles around the loop a few times.

          • A lot of work is being done on this, and the machines you see ARE the result of a lot of progress. A 14 TeV machine built 50 years ago would have been very much bigger than the LHC.

            BTW - the machines are cicular because they DO send the particles around many times - typically accelerator over quite a long time, then store the beams for hours while they collide.

            Of course if you want to give us more R&D money we would be very happy to work on better accelerator designs. There are some concepts out there

            • I don't claim to hold qualifications such that I may tell the community how to build them nor the full details of how they work. I just get the impression that obtaining larger colliders is going to be beyond the limits of government will. Invention might be easier than persuasion.
          • IIRC, getting particles to speed isn't the hard part or the reason accelerators are so big. The reason is because they need the diameter to be big enough that they can keep the particles confined in a magnetic field without the particles smashing into the walls.

            Too tight and the field strength needed to contain the particles simply becomes unreasonable.

    • Re:LHC didn't destroy the Unvierse? (Score:4, Funny)

      by glavenoid ( 636808 ) on Friday February 07, 2014 @05:38PM (#46189991) Journal

      Well, yes it did destroy the universe, but only after creating a new tiny universe which, incidentally, contained a tiny LHC to scale which was also creating a tinier universe which contained yet another tinier LHC and so on...

      Matter of fact, I think our universe is one of those tiny ones somewhere on the line and our perception of time just hasn't caught up yet.

  • Irony (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Spottywot ( 1910658 ) on Friday February 07, 2014 @05:31PM (#46189915)
    What's ironic for me is that the articles over the last couple of days have been a lot more interesting to me than in recent weeks, while I fully support the FUCK BETA protest, it's a real shame that we're missing out on some interesting discussion.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by trip23 ( 727132 )

      What's ironic for me is that the articles over the last couple of days have been a lot more interesting to me than in recent weeks, while I fully support the FUCK BETA protest, it's a real shame that we're missing out on some interesting discussion.

      That's the price you have to pay for revolting against the overlords. I, for one, do not welcome our new beta.

    • Re:Irony (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AlfaMike ( 1902786 ) on Friday February 07, 2014 @05:45PM (#46190043)
      I agree, but that is the point of a protest. Sacrifices must be made. You can't take Dice out of their comfort zone without taking the community outside of it as well.
      • I agree completely, hopefully it works and we can all carry on as normal, unfortunately I think Dice have spent too much money on this to let it go. We will be sold out to the advertisers like every other free site on the web. The monetization of everything eventually fucks everything. There will be no safe harbour anywhere for long until either the nature of humanity changes, or the nature of the economy does. I know which one of those is more likely, but even that is a long hard road that no-one wants t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PingXao ( 153057 )

      There has been a distinct trend in the last few days towards much more interesting articles. Less Bieber, more Mars. That type of thing. I thought I was imagining it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      Weird, exactly what I was thinking earlier today...

    • That's the whole point. With Beta there can be no discussion.

  • (Hans Moleman is inside a phone booth at the bird sanctuary with birds attacking him.)

    Hans Moleman: (into the phone) Hello, I need the largest seed bell you have. (pause) No, that's too big.

    My point is that some things can be too big: but not a supercollider.

    Humorbot 5.0: So I said, "Super-collider? I just met her!" [audience laughs] And then they built the super collider.

    Also insert here some observation about theoretical maximum energies, public misunderstandings and political obstacles.

  • The Slashcott (Score:3, Informative)

    by sticks_us ( 150624 ) on Friday February 07, 2014 @05:35PM (#46189955) Homepage

    So where will everybody be next week?

    Hacker news
    Lobste.rs
    Reddit ...?

    Also, has someone volunteered to put up a slashcott update site (maybe with statistics on how well/poorly the site is doing during the blockade?)

    Just curious.

    • I enjoy browsing Reddit but I think it would be a terrible place for a community like Slashdot. The comment sections deteriorate WAY faster as soon as a sub-reddit gets mildly popular.

    • Also, has someone volunteered to put up a slashcott update site (maybe with statistics on how well/poorly the site is doing during the blockade?)

      Yup. falling like a rock [alexa.com].

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zedrick ( 764028 )
      http://www.c64.sk/ [c64.sk]

      No section for discussions, but at least news for nerds.

    • After getting a couple of thousand karma points at HN over the course of a year (manly due to a couple of very popular story submissions) I quit going there because their administration is even more opaque than slashdot.

      They have this policy of "hell-banning" posters so that they think their posts are going through, but they are the only people who can actually see their own posts. If you set an obscure flag in your preferences you can see their story submissions (and comments), they are marked "[dead]" im

    • slashcott.com [slashcott.com]
      I'm sure the maintainer on Github [github.com] will gladly incorporate any Pull Requests.

  • US5722418
    +
    US5644363
    +
    GoogleGlass
    +
    Acceptance
    =
    ????

    If history is any sort of an indicator, any rights we sell today, our children must buy back with blood tomorrow

  • Alternative to being stuck with Beta (Score:3, Informative)

    by computersareevil ( 244846 ) on Friday February 07, 2014 @05:39PM (#46190003)

    Will soon be hosted at AltSlashdot.org [slashdot.org] or a site linked through that domain.

    It will be for the Nerds, by the Nerds, focusing on the Stuff That Really Matters: The community that makes the comments the best part of Slashdot.

    The name will change to avoid any trademark problems. The new domain will be linked through AltSlashdot.org for as long as practical.

    Some have suggested encouraging Bruce Perens to resurrect Technocrat.net for the third time. With all due respect to Bruce, the problem with that is he has shown he is not a reliable host. He has twice deleted that site without warning and without providing access to the archives. I don't think we want to get burned a third time.

    • The name will change to avoid any trademark problems.

      Just call it "slashcott.org" - satirical and political.

    • With all due respect to Bruce, the problem with that is he has shown he is not a reliable host. He has twice deleted that site without warning and without providing access to the archives. I don't think we want to get burned a third time.

      You've raised the issue, so let's put it out there - why are you going to be more reliable than Bruce?

      And tell me you're not going to write it in Ruby ... or PHP.

      • First, it's not my site.

        Second, I've never been burned by the new host. But I have been burned twice by Bruce. Why should I give Bruce a third chance to burn me?

        • Second, I've never been burned by the new host. But I have been burned twice by Bruce. Why should I give Bruce a third chance to burn me?

          Right, you wouldn't, but with that experience, you'd want to look for a candidate hoster that would have qualities that would decrease the chances of a collapse. For better or worse, Slashdot has never collapsed (though they seem to be trying their best lately). So, Slashdot did something right that Bruce did wrong (he did eventually hire that one guy ... forget his name

  • "Not content with the profitability of Slashdot, researchers at DICE have their sights set on a new beast of a website [slashdot.org] that could have a negative content impact of 80 to 100 percent. The “leading provider of specialized websites” announced that it was hatching plans for an horrendous successor to Slashdot.org [slashdot.org] with an experimental rollout, which was quickly shit upon by the Slashdot community, resulting in an “apology” this week [slashdot.org]. The idea is to consider different Slashdot design

  • SSC resurrected (Score:3)

    by u19925 ( 613350 ) on Friday February 07, 2014 @05:53PM (#46190109)

    Didn't we almost had it? See Superconducting Super Collider [wikipedia.org] This was proposed in 1983 and cancelled in 1992 after spending 2 billion USD.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Raxxon ( 6291 )

      I've been waiting for them to do it. SSC was bigger than LHC to start with. My dad worked for a company supplying computers and such for the project before it was canceled. Never got the chance to go out there with him since I was a minor and not legally employable. :| If they do bring it back I know where I'm throwing my resume. ;)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tokiko ( 560961 )

      They even specified a circumference between 80 to 100 kilometers. The Superconducting Super Collider was to be 87.1 kilometers!

    • The SSC was to be a 40TeV machjine (20 per beam). Regardless, CERN are being a bunch fo fucktards with this proposal as they can't even point to what it will be good for as they a) haven't even hit their own design energies and luminosities and b) have yet to take sufficient data to have a clue what the next (if any) hadron collider should look like.

  • They're calling it FCC. (Future Circular Colliders). What a stupid choice. I mean its bound to cause some confusion that could have very easily been avoided.
    I realise the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) isn't a global organization but you'd think CERN would have the brains and foresight to avoid reuse of already long established and very well-known acronyms.

  • I think they could put this new super large particle collider in the whitespace left by Beta.

  • Made to order for a 40 TeV collider! Halfway to 100 TeV, triple the energy of LHC! Save billions in construction!
    http://www.amusingplanet.com/2... [amusingplanet.com]

  • I can only picture that someone who looks like Dr. Evil (from the Austin Powers series) commissioning the construction of this "bigger, better" supercollider :|

    • They originally tasked Dr. Horrible with managing it, but he kept trying to sidetrack the project into building bigger and bigger Freeze Rays.

  • See. They sized it at 27 kilometers. If the had made it 27 miles instead it would be much more powerfuler.

  • Monetization (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PingXao ( 153057 ) on Friday February 07, 2014 @06:04PM (#46190215)

    BETA is clearly about monetization. The kids today - the next generation of consumers - expect a trendy style that slashdot doesn't exhibit. Dice is clearly interested in attracting a larger "audience" and they can't afford to have these new consumers visit the site, decide that it's not hip enough or it looks "old", and move on never to return. That has to be the thinking behind BETA.

    And the reason they want to increase their "audience share" is simple: The more people visit the site the more they can charge for advertising space. It really is that simple. They want to turn slashdot into a profit generator and the community be damned. They will happily throw all of us under the bus if it means they can acquire hordes of retards whose idea of insightful commentary consists of nothing more than "+1", or "Like" or (as we used to loathe in the days of AOHeLl: "Me too!"

    Like broadcast television and several other advertising models, they want to turn US into the PRODUCT that they sell to ADVERTISERS.

    Greedy sleazebags. I eagerly await Boycott Week from Feb 10th through the 17th. My only use of slashdot that week will be using the name on other sites to see how much the traffic drops off. More widespread dissemination of the BOYCOTT week needs to happen this weekend before it's scheduled to start on Monday. The only way to get through to marketeers and corporatist assholes is to hit 'em where it hurts: in their wallet. A boycott has the potential to show them just how low their "brand" can sink when they piss off their loyal userbase.

  • Should be a dual purpose particle accelerator (Score:4, Funny)

    by Trachman ( 3499895 ) on Friday February 07, 2014 @06:10PM (#46190283) Journal
    They Should consider building a dual purpose atom accelerator (Lepton Accelerator). One purpose would be research of the particles by colliding them. The secondary purpose would be defense of the earth from meteorites. Once you accelerate a ton of atoms to the speed of light you, then, can direct the accelerated beam towards meteorite and destroy it. This new accelerator can be valuable defense installation. Also easier to justify the funds needed and take them from military budgets. I can see that in 50 years we will be building particle accelerator with the radius of the earth, 6378 kilometers or circumference of 40,000 kilometeres. Based on my approximate calculations, if current technologies are used we could achieve 21 PeV or 20734 TeV in such accelerator.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by azav ( 469988 )

      Sigh. Wish I had mod points left to upvote you.

    • Even 10^20 eV cosmic rays don't make it through the earth's atmosphere. Instead they create huge diffuse showers of secondary particles, It seems non-intuitive, but higher energy doesn't help much in getting through solid materials.

      You will get some muons which will go through a lot of matter, but they will not be very directional.

  • Gee (Score:2)

    by azav ( 469988 )

    Damn shame we didn't build one in Texas when we had the chance.

  • It has to be at least .... 3 times as large!

  • Of course they want one. (Score:5, Funny)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Friday February 07, 2014 @06:43PM (#46190743) Homepage Journal

    Even *I* want a collider 3x as powerful as the most powerful particle accelerator the world has yet seen, and I'm not even a physicist.

    I like to imagine the kilometers of stainless steel gleaming in the harsh mercury vapor illumination; the drifting swirls of escaped cryogenic vapors; the sound of my evil laughter echoing in the vast subterranean chamber. If those things don't inspire you, there must be something inhuman about you.

  • It seems that the Texas location is fair game again.

    There are not too many places where a 100Km circle can be scribed
    and not slice through hills, mountains, and towns.

    My personal preference for spending billions and billions
    on research would best be an expansion and repurposing
    of the US federal compute center (NSA, FBI, DHS) in Utah
    to be a national and global climate center research center.

    There is a real need to understand the climate changes man made
    or not and understand what needs to happen.

    We could plan

  • On the topic, though, I thought next generation accelerators would be linear to avoid radiational losses.

  • "Dad, I wanna 100-foot-tall pony!"

  • Goal? (Score:3)

    by manu0601 ( 2221348 ) on Friday February 07, 2014 @10:56PM (#46192657)
    What is their goal? LHC was to find the Higgs boson. Now they have it (though I am not sure it has any consequence), what is the next goal?
  • These geniuses can build CERN, but they can't install it on the moon? I understand, it's the math; right? And CERN types don't really work with the math? CERN types are more big picture folks, right?
  • Wouldn't the optimal path to increase the speed of matter as rapidly as possible be a straight line? Perhaps it's impractical, but they could conceivably build an accelerator that wrapped the surface of Earth. Go for the gold or go home. :)

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