Higgs Factory: Why does CERN want to build a giant shredder?

More than a decade later, CERN scientists are still smashing subatomic particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), but have reported no comparable discoveries since the accident. Higgs boson. But they hope to make big new discoveries with the much larger particle collider, which, if built, would be three times the size of the LHC.

The Future Circular Collider (FCC) will be more than 90 km long. Its purpose is to act as a so-called Higgs factory, producing Higgs boson particles for research. The Higgs boson is thought to be one of the building blocks of the universe. But at an estimated cost of 15 billion francs (€15.7 billion; $17.5 billion) and in a world of limited resources, is the FCC worth it?

Criticism of CERN‘Development plans

CERN conducts “fundamental” research. It is so fundamental – heuristic – that scientists can never be sure whether their research will yield results. Certainly, no results will be immediately useful to people’s daily lives.

Some people argue that the FCC’s proposed spending ($17 billion) would be better spent on the more practical and pressing scientific questions of our time. The world will spend about $4.1 billion on malaria research in 2022. That same year, the World Health Organization says there were 249 million cases of malaria and 608,000 malaria-related deaths in 85 countries.

Would $17 billion be better spent researching malaria or other real-time threats like climate change and emerging viruses? Theoretical physicist Sabine Hosenfelder thinks so: Hosenfelder has been a staunch critic of CERN’s expansion plans.

“This is a high-risk, low-profit project,” Hossenfelder said in a video post. Hossenfelder noted that the FCC project will cost much more to actually start operations. CERN also came under public scrutiny for its energy costs during the Russia-Ukraine war.

Despite this, dissenting voices against CERN have been few and far between, especially among other scientists. Many scientists believe that building a larger particle collider could answer many fundamental questions, such as the Higgs boson.

Why is the Higgs boson so big?

In unscientific terms, the Higgs boson has been described as the “God particle” – the particle that “glues” the fundamental 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—it shows why particles have mass.

When particles have no mass, they race around the universe like photons at the speed of light. But having mass gives particles gravitational properties and ultimately slows them down. And with gravity, they are able to meet and form other elements.

In 1964, Peter Higgs, François Englert, and others proposed that particles acquire mass by interacting with what they called the Higgs field. The Large Hadron Collider CERN proved this theory experimentally in 2012. Higgs and Englert received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work.

What questions can the Higgs boson still answer?

CERN (at the time of writing) is the only laboratory equipped to study the Higgs boson. “This device uses the largest machines to study the smallest particles,” said Judith Pirscher, Germany’s Minister of State for Education and Research at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) at an event in Berlin.

But 12 years have passed since the successful discovery. Why do scientists still crush particles? And why should CERN continue and sink billions of dollars into the process? “With the Higgs boson, we have found a key, but we still don’t know everything it can unlock,” said Klaus Desch, a CERN representative in Germany who is based at the University of Bonn.

Dash said that further study of the Higgs could reveal more about the origin of the universe and dark matter, about which we know very little.

Beate Heinemann, director of particle physics at Germany’s Electron Synchrotron, added that future CERN research may explain why we see more matter than antimatter, suggesting that “something is missing.”

There is also global interest in this fundamental research and international competition. In 2018, China proposed building a 100 km collider to produce one million Higgs bosons over seven years. Meanwhile, the US Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) decided to support the upgrade at CERN rather than building a separate Higgs Factory. Japan also halted its collider programs, the International Linear Collider (ILC), in 2019.

After the LHC: the circular collider of the future

The LHC will complete its operation and shut down in 2041. If the FCC goes ahead, the new tunnel will be at an average depth of 200 meters underground and will include eight surface sites that will conduct four tests.

About a third of this $17 billion cost will be buried with this tunnel alone. This construction will result in approximately 16.4 million tons of excavated material over a five-year period. CERN is expected to submit a feasibility report by 2025. This project will examine the technical, financial, geological and environmental impacts of the project.

“We are constantly looking for ways to reuse the waste energy of our scientific facilities, for example, to electrify nearby villages,” said general manager Fabiola Giannotti. DW. We are already doing this in some cases. Sustainability is a top priority at CERN.

At a CERN 70th anniversary event in Berlin, speakers reminded the audience that the World Wide Web was born at CERN—the WWW, one might say, was another fundamental idea that, like the Higgs boson, binds our lives together. CERN has also developed research areas such as big data analysis, quantum computing, superconducting magnets and carbon dioxide cooling of computers.

“Basic research needs support,” Piershe said simply.