The Higgs Institute: Why CERN wants to create a supermassive particle smasher

Ten years later, CERN scientists are still smashing subatomic particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) but have not reported anything resembling a discovery since then. Higgs boson. But they hope to make a new discovery, the main one with a very large collider, which, if built, will be three times the size of the LHC.

The proposed cycle track would be more than 90 km long. It would like to serve as a so-called Higgs laboratory, producing Higgs boson particles for research. The Higgs boson is thought to be the building block of the universe. But at a price tag of CHF 15 billion (~€15.7 bn; ~$17.5bn), and in a world with limited funds, is the FCC worth it?

Criticism of CERN‘s expansion plan

CERN conducts “core” research. It is very important – research – and scientists cannot be sure whether their research will produce anything. Of course, it is not a result that will be immediately useful in people’s daily lives.

Some people argue that the FCC’s proposed cost ($17 billion) would be better spent on the most important and urgent scientific questions of our time. The world spent about $4.1 billion on malaria research in 2022. In the same year, the World Health Organization said there were an estimated 249 million malaria cases and 608,000 deaths from malaria in 85 countries.

Will the $17 billion be better spent on malaria research or other real threats, such as climate change and emerging viruses? Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder thinks so: Hossenfelder has been an outspoken critic of CERN’s expansion plans.

“It’s a high-risk, unpaid job,” Hossenfelder said in a video post. Hossenfelder said the FCC project will cost a lot once operations begin. CERN was also publicly scrutinized for its energy spending during the Russian-Ukrainian war crisis.

Despite this, the voices opposing CERN, especially among other scientists, have been few and far between. Many scientists believe that the creation of a large complex object can answer many basic questions, such as the Higgs boson.

Why is the Higgs boson so big?

To put it scientifically, the Higgs boson has been described as “God’s bug” – it “binds” the basic elements of the universe. It may seem like the universe came out of nothing, but the Higgs boson explains how the Big Bang happened 13.7 billion years ago – and it reveals why things are so finite.

When particles have no mass, they race through space at the speed of light like a photon. But having mass gives the body gravitational properties, eventually slowing them down. With gravity, they are able to come together and create other things.

In 1964, Peter Higgs, François Englert, and others proposed that particles gain mass by interacting with – what they called – the Higgs field. CERN’s Large Hadron Collider experiment proved this idea in 2012. Higgs and Englert won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work.

What questions can the Higgs boson still answer?

CERN is (at the time of writing) the only laboratory capable of studying the Higgs boson. “He uses the biggest machines to study the smallest things,” said Judith Pirscher, German state secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), at an event in Berlin.

But twelve years have passed since this achievement was discovered. Why are scientists still smashing particles? Why would CERN continue, ruining billions in the process? “With the Higgs Boson, we have found a key, but we don’t know what it can unlock,” said Klaus Desch, CERN’s representative for Germany, who is based at the University of Bonn.

Desch said studying the Higgs further could reveal more about the early universe and dark matter – about which we know very little.

Beate Heinemann, director of particle physics at the German Electron Synchrotron, added that CERN’s future research could explain why we keep things beyond the barrier, suggesting “something that is missing.”

There is also global interest in this important research, and international competition. In 2018, China proposed to build 100km to produce one million Higgs bosons within seven years. Meanwhile, the American Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) chose to support an upgrade at CERN rather than building a separate Higgs Laboratory. Japan suspended plans for its own collider, the International Linear Collider (ILC), in 2019.

After the LHC: The Circular Collider of the Future

The LHC will complete and close its work in 2041. If the FCC goes ahead, the new tunnel will be at an average depth of 200 meters underground and will include eight sites that will serve research four.

About one-third of the $17 billion cost will be buried with this tunnel alone. The construction will result in approximately 16.4 million tons of mined material over five years. CERN is expected to write a feasibility study by 2025. It will analyze the technical, financial, geographical, and environmental impact of the project.

“We are always looking for ways to use waste energy from our scientific installations, for example, to power the nearby villages,” company director Fabiola Gianotti told him. DW. “We have already done this in some cases. Sustainability is a priority at CERN. “

At the 70th anniversary celebration for CERN in Berlin, speakers reminded the audience that the World Wide Web was born at CERN – you can say WWW is another important concept, which, like the Higgs boson, connects our lives together. CERN has promoted growth in research areas such as big data analysis, quantum computing, supermagnetism and carbon dioxide computing.

Pirsche put it simply: “Basic research needs validation.”