It may be launched in the 2040s
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the largest particle accelerator in the world. It will remain so for a long time, but CERN is already moving forward with plans to create a much larger collider.
CERN initially announced plans to create a new accelerator in 2019. Now the center says it wants its construction plans to be approved within five years, which would put the collider up and running in the 2040s.
More precisely, during this period the installation will work as part of the first stage, when scientists will collide electrons and positrons. The second phase will be implemented only in the 2070s — then protons will begin to collide at the accelerator.
The cost of the new installation is estimated at 20 billion euros. For comparison, the LHC cost $6 billion and took seven years to build.
The new accelerator will have a circumference of 91 km versus almost 27 km for the LHC. This should make it possible to achieve energies of the order of 100 TeV, while the LHC, after modernization, offers only 14 TeV.
The new installation, thanks to higher energies, may allow the discovery of so-called new physics. Including particles beyond the standard model and, for example, revealing the secrets of dark matter. For example, the LHC made it possible to detect the Higgs boson, which was theoretically predicted 50 years before its discovery. True, many scientists express doubts about the advisability of building a new accelerator, since it is far from certain that even these energies will be enough to discover something completely new.