The CERN prepares a colossal bet by 2070. Some physicists believe it can take it to ruin

Santiago Folgueras is a young Spanish physicist who is leading an interesting project in CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). During The conversation I had with him Several months ago he told me in detail What is your Intrepid projectwhich will be linked to the future HL LHC (High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider or high luminosity LHC). However, what caught my attention was the enthusiasm with which he told me about FCC (future circular colliding), which will be the machine that will presumably happen to HL LHC.

If the itinerary that has planned the CERN continues its course as has done so far the HL LHC will be ready at the end of this decade. In 2030. and will be able to produce no less than 40 million collisions per second. The amount of information that will generate will be so huge that it will be necessary to put a system that is able to analyze the data in real time and make a decision regarding the collision that has just been produced.

This is precisely the purpose of the HL LHC: drastically increase the number of collisions if we compare them with those that have occurred in the previous LHC iterations. The luminosity measures, in fact, how many potential particle collisions are produced by surface and time unit. It is measured in reverse femtobarns, so that each of them is equivalent to 100 billion collisions between protons. Of course, these are billion on a long scale, so an reverse femtobarn are 100 million million collisions.

FCC design is under discussion

Since the accelerator experiments began, in 2010, until the end of 2018, which was the moment in which its activity ceased, 150 reverse femtobarns occurred inside. According to the current planning of CERN technicians, the modifications required by LHC to increase its luminosity should be able to produce 250 reverse femtobarns every year until reaching 4,000 during the entire period of activity.

In any case, the most interesting is to remember that the improvements that CERN technicians are introducing in the LHC respond to the need to find fissures in the standard model with the purpose of Expand our understanding of the world of particles. Some of the questions that CERN’s physicists have the hope of being able to answer with the help of HL LHC are what it is and what properties it has The dark matterbecause Neutrinos have mass And why There is no antimatter In the universe. There is no doubt that they are exciting questions.

However, CERN’s physicists plan does not end the LHC HL. When all its operation cycles finally conclude this institution plans to build the FCC, an accelerator much larger than the LHC HL and capable of reaching much higher energies. Presumably will have a circle of 100 km (that of the current LHC measures 27 km), and its construction will start in 2038. The purpose of CERN physicists is that the FCC is capable of reaching during the second stage of the project an energy of 100 TEV (Telelectronvoltios). To train a precise idea about what we are talking about we just have to remember that the current LHC works with an energy of 16 TEV.

If everything goes as scheduled, the FCC should be prepared not beyond 2070. According to the CERN, the first phase of the project, which does not the complete plan, will cost about 17,000 million dollars. Vladimir Shiltsev, a physicist specialized in accelerators at the University of Northern Illinois (USA), calculates that the entire project will cost At least 30,000 million dollars.

According to Nature Some physicists, such as Jenny List, a researcher in the Hamburg Electron Syntron (Germany), criticize this plan and defend the construction of a linear accelerator of up to 33 km instead of a circular one. According to them, the linear option will be much cheaper and will allow the same experiments as a circular installation. We will see why option finally opt, but there is no doubt that these discussions are necessary to make the right decisions. Scientists still have plenty of time to weigh everything and direct the project by the most conducive path.

Image | Piotr Traczyk/Cern

More information | Nature

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