back to article You've seen the Large Hadron Collider. Now comes the HUGE Hadron Collider

The scientific world is preparing for the arrival of a even larger Large Hadron Collider, after the publication of blueprints for a next generation proton-punisher. A five volume report containing the plans for the International Linear Collider has been handed over to the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) …

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  1. Christoph

    Is that the best site?

    "likely to be sited in Japan"

    This thing is going to be huge, and need extremely accurate alignment. Isn't Japan rather too prone to earthquakes to be a suitable site for it?

    1. hplasm
      Happy

      Re: Is that the best site?

      True, but it's the only known location of the Godzilla Quark.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Is that the best site?

        Up from the depths

        Thirty stories high

        Breathing fire

        His head in the sky

        Collider

        Collider

        Collider

        And Godzuki*

        * (the new name for higgs boson)

    2. BlueGreen

      Re: Is that the best site?

      Earthquakes were my first thought too. The second was, as I understand it, Japan's already a financial basket case, with a demographic time bomb on top of that like a fat toxic cherry.

      If so I can't see how their offer to pay for half will mean anything in the medium to long term. Anyone here with any financial insight care to opine?

    3. Grave

      Re: Is that the best site?

      takes some "genius" to select a high seismic hazard area. just look up plate tectonics and relevant fault zones in japan.

    4. An nonymous Cowerd
      Mushroom

      in the antiproton collector at CERN

      with a stable beam in the PS, we could see the Mediterranean but mostly Atlantic tides slightly moving France on our beam diagnostics. And that was on the other side of the country, behind an Alp or two.

      With linear colliders, they're rather less subtle than stochastically cooled circular ones - you generate a current, and launch/accelerate it in a straight line down an evacuated tube for a single 'bang', each run might well be different, whilst with synchrotron colliders like LHC you get to see nearly the same bunch of particles 27km/c =~ every 90 microseconds and can so prepare the beam 'density' a bit better?

      I suppose I'll have to read the design report and see how it might be a good linear design? Last I heard it was hoped that the big interesting linear collider might go to DESY near Hamburg... are you still designing it Nick?

      Oh & BTW , hadrons are multi-quark fuzzinesses - eg protons, pbars, neutrons, mesons, pions - not exactly e's and ebars - which are leptons, so might El'Reg be referring to the Huge Lepton Collider?

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Is that the best site?

      Japan!, certainly not, far away, foreigners speaking a language only they understand, earthquakes and lack of power living on some small island. We should not be so decent but claim our right to build this device here, though not in Wales or Scotland, of course. And if those farmers in, was it Japan or something, insist of having the right to take part in the financing we should consider that too, and give them a fair chance. I will send my MP a letter right now.

      1. Steven Roper

        Re: Is that the best site?

        Agreed, building a massive precision instrument like this right on the Ring of Fire is just plain asking for it. But we've sited all our electronics manufacturing in the same disaster area, so why not go the whole hog like the geniuses we are?

        My personal preference to site something like this would be Siberia or the Australian outback. Somewhere there's no tectonic activity at all and the thing can sit nice and stably on top of a big fat granitic continental craton that isn't going anywhere.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Power issues

    Also Japan has a large shortfall of power (http://blogs.yis.ac.jp/duffieldj/2013/06/03/10c-japans-power-problem/). I can imagine the lights dimming as they power up ;)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Power issues

      I know, if they could just power up a few nuclear power stations, ahhhh...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Power issues

        This is a good idea for japan. Economically they are having problems yet have the technical ability. They also have a power issue and a lot of people who cant count (how many of the many died due to radiation- 0). How else do you insist that money needs to be spent on reliable power supplies. And with such a development in japan they could surely exploit that further and maybe revive their economy

  3. Suricou Raven

    Energy levels

    Linears are not really high-energy accelerators. Even when at full power, the ILC (from my googling) is only 1TeV, while the LHC is 7TeV. It does have the the advantage of being able to accelerate light particles, something at which (for reasons of Science) circular accelerators like the LHC totally suck.

    So while the LHC continues bashing up heavy particles (the heavier, the better - there's a reason it uses whole ions), the ILC will be performing experiments upon an entirely different set of much lighter, more fundamental particles. They aren't duplicating work.

    1. Filippo Silver badge

      Re: Energy levels

      Thanks! I was wondering about the wisdom of embarking in another ultra-expensive physics project when the LHC isn't even running at full power yet. Your explanation sounds reasonable.

      1. Lars Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: Energy levels

        "when the LHC isn't even running at full power yet". It will probably take 10 to 20 years to build a new one so there is a lot of time to use the LHC still. And this is all just speculations still.

    2. An0n C0w4rd

      Re: Energy levels

      Given that most of the run time at the LHC is devoted to proton-proton collisions, I'm unsure about your "light particles" comment. Heavy ion runs at LHC, typically Pb, only got 1-2 months per year

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Trollface

      Re: Energy levels

      > It does have the the advantage of being able to accelerate light particles,

      Surely "light particles" always travel at c in a vacuum?

  4. ant 2

    HHC?

    Unlikely to be a hadron collider if it's smashing the pants out of electrons and positrons. More like a Huge Lepton Collider.

    1. John Colman
      Joke

      Re: HHC?

      I think Timmy Mallet named it best:

      Itty bitty hitty splitty, Speedy uppy piece of kit-ty

      That they build in the land of Japan

    2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: HHC?

      Absolutely Correct! El Reg has to review its "nucular nomenclature".

      Also, at The Well-Informed Blog of Peter Woit, we read, back in August 2012:

      For many years now discussion in the HEP community of what might be the appropriate next machine to try and finance and build after the LHC has centered around the idea of a linear electron-positron collider. The logic has been that an electron-positron machine would provide a much better environment that the LHC for detailed studies of physics at the TeV scale. At these energies, synchrotron radiation losses when accelerating electrons are so high in a circular geometry that such a machine would have to be a linear collider to keep the power needed something plausible. The two main proposals under study have been the ILC (250 GeV + 250 GeV, later upgradeable to 500 GeV + 500 GeV) and, a less mature technology, CLIC (1.5 TeV + 1.5 TeV). These would be very expensive machines to build and operate ($10 billion and up?), requiring completely new technology, tunnels and detectors.

      But also:

      This realization is driving a new proposal that is getting a lot of attention: the idea of going back to circular electron-positron colliders, building a new machine in the LHC tunnel, optimized as a Higgs factory, and designed to operate at 120 GeV + 120 GeV. This is being called “LEP3″, since it would be in many ways similar to LEP2, the predecessor machine to the LHC, which operated in the same tunnel, reaching an energy of 209 GeV. There would be huge cost advantages to building such a machine over the ILC or CLIC, since it can use the LHC tunnel, infrastructure, and, crucially, the CMS and ATLAS detectors (the detectors are a large part of the cost of a new accelerator).

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Holmes

        Re: HHC?

        Plus, I have heard that Muon Factories to generate copious amounts of high-energy Neutrinos (so copious and high-energy that they actually pose a radiation hazard downrange of the collider) would be of mucho interest in studying neutrino physics, where quite a lot of questions are open and parameters are floating around. But the technology ain't even on the paper yet.

  5. Don Jefe
    Happy

    ICFA

    I imagine getting invited to join the International Committee on Future Accelerators must be cool. In my mind they show up in a hypersonic hover car and whisk you away to a private volcano lair staffed by monkey butlers for your initiation party.

  6. Hungry Sean

    meanwhile in the texas desert

    15 miles of special built tunnel are lying vacant.

    let's go to see the supercollider

    Not sure I understand why making a brand new installation is better than reviving the SSC.

    1. frank ly

      Re: meanwhile in the texas desert

      That's like being Rick Rolled, but much more interesting and relevant.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: meanwhile in the texas desert

      Unfortunately, with the continuing dain-bramage our government keeps executing, there are a lot of foreign scientists that would NOT want to come to the US to work on the SSC. Yet another way our government's stupidity hurts the US.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: meanwhile in the texas desert

        "there are a lot of foreign scientists that would NOT want to come to the US"

        Well, yes, that's because they call foreigners aliens. What are they going to call real aliens?

    3. Don Jefe

      Re: meanwhile in the texas desert

      Because the one in Texas is full of water. They filled it to prevent trespassing/mole people villages and the water has rendered the structure unsound.

      It's also in Texas.

    4. Nigel 11
      Meh

      Re: meanwhile in the texas desert

      That's a bit like upgrading from a Bentley to a Bugatti, when you know that what you really need is a supersonic jet. Not a big enough advance to be worth paying that much for. The LHC is the biggest ring we'll build in any forseeable future.

      Linear accelerators are the most obvious way we might get a really big advance. In outline ... an electric field of a million volts per meter, over ten kilometers, is 10GV. Subject a proton to that and because it's ~2000 times more massy than an electron, that's ~20TeV. Now work on higher field strengths ... none of this is impossible, it's just unknown territory in engineering terms.

      For a rather further-fetched idea, look up PASER (and consider where we are today, starting from some theoretical 1930s papers on the field effect ... with a big detour via germanium junction transistors).

      1. Annihilator
        Boffin

        Re: meanwhile in the texas desert

        "The LHC is the biggest ring we'll build in any forseeable future"

        Except the LHC had the huge advantage of having the ring already constructed in the 80's. It was originally built for the Large Electron-Positron Collider :-)

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: meanwhile in the texas desert

      The 15 miles are worth nothing, you need a new much longer tunnel and I would suggest you spent that money rather on education to understand how to spell tunnel and similar difficult words.

      1. Hungry Sean
        Mushroom

        Re: meanwhile in the texas desert @ac

        I don't think my post had any typos, or are you just ragging on Yanks generally? You might want to seek some further education yourself, creating a false dichotomy between basic education and advanced research, as if those were the only two aspects of our society that relied on government funding. Personally, I'd rather see cuts start with the military and intelligence departments, but even that's a pretty sweeping generalization.

        At any rate, I have a theory (well, actually, a baseless conjecture) about why big physics projects are vitally important to the future of humanity: they are there to keep the physicists safely entertained and distracted. We all remember what happened the last time the greatest physicists on the planet all got together and worked on something with concrete real-world consequences.

    6. Daniel B.

      Oh yes, the SSC

      It would have been awesome. But politics killed it by lack of funding, and IIRC parts of it have been even sold out. It's currently one of the largest abandoned constructions of the modern world.

    7. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: meanwhile in the texas desert

      Mainly because the tunnels have been sold off and are used for data storage (amongst other things)

  7. HP Cynic

    More bad editorializing: there is no "God Particle" and nobody is looking for it. And please stop this nonsense about "tearing a hole in the space time continuum" !

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      How about "puncturing the cloud", then?

    2. frank ly

      What about being turned into quantum custard or superstring soup?

      1. Graham Dawson Silver badge

        @frank ly

        So, on top of Godzilla, the poor Japanese will now have to contend with the legendary Soup Dragon.

    3. AceRimmer

      "More bad editorializing"

      says the man who uses the word 'editorializing' without seeming to know what it means

    4. Nigel 11
      WTF?

      Why not? It's no different to the everyday usage of "nuke it"!

      Doesn't everyone know about natural cosmic rays up to10^19 eV, and the number of them that have interacted with the sun in the last 4 billion years? (Hint: the sun is BIG). If really high energy particles had any untoward effects on large collections of matter, we wouldn't be here to talk about it. (Or the fun alternative, maybe they once DID have dramatic effects on the pre-universe, and that's WHY we're here talking about it! )

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "no "God Particle"", silly, of course there are some, but God never lost any so it is silly to look for them. "Tearing holes..." is not nice either. But this is all right for a Cynic like you or does that apply only to HP.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They should name it after Hugh Jardon.

  9. Alan 6

    Earthquakes

    I'm sure these boffins have already thought of this, but is it wise to dig a huge tunnel and site a massively expensive piece of scientific kit in a country prone to earthquakes?

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Earthquakes

      Well, there already are at least the Kamikande Neutrino Observatory. And then you have complete Boiling Water Reactors and actual towns sited in that country.

      1. Nigel 11

        Re: Earthquakes

        The difference is that they're relatively small and rigid structures that can survive the gradual distortion of the ground they are built on bt anything less than a truly huge earthquake. Whereas a LINAC 10km long that has to be dead straight might end up bent out of alignment, which would ruin it.

        A picture from California is worth a thousand words

        http://www.und.edu/instruct/mineral/101intro/slides/faults/slide19.htm

    2. Nigel 11

      Mis-alignment

      By the way, the control codes at CERN really DO have to include a calculation of the phase of the moon. The earth suffers elastic tidal distortion, enough to change the alignment of the LHC to a significant extent.

  10. James Hughes 1

    Missing the most important piece of information...

    How big is it? In elephants or whatever the length unit of the day is.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They should call it...

    ... the Hardon.

    1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: They should call it...

      No, there'd be too much uncertainty about size and position.

  12. Herby

    If you want to bash Positrons & Electrons...

    ...They have one of those ring shaped things over at SLAC (it is at the end of the two mile long slingshot). I even visited it. Granted, it is a few (40 years) old, but it did produce some good science (and may still, I haven't kept up). Yes, it is a ring about 100 feet in diameter ("small" by today's standards) but just put some bigger coils and pump up the volume, and you could be good to go.

    And Yes, they DID discover particles there.

    1. Nigel 11
      Unhappy

      Re: If you want to bash Positrons & Electrons...

      Doesn't work. The trouble is that charged particles emit electromagnetic radiation when you change the direction they are moving. The higher the energy of the particles and the tighter the bend, the more they do it. You reach a limit where it's not feasible to pump in energy any faster than the particles are shedding it, and the only way around that is a bigger ring (or ideally a straight line for zero losses, which is where this discussion started).

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    >"a few more minutes"

    According to the first random website I found, the distance from Tokyo to Geneva is 9803.55km, and that's as the bird flies, rather than in a straight line through the Earth's crust/core. Assuming that a bubble nucleation event domain wall would propagate at the speed of light, I make it at most an extra 32.7 milliseconds to contemplate our lot...

    1. Nigel 11
      Alert

      Re: >"a few more minutes"

      "The bad news is that it's dropped into the earth's core and is now irreversibly eating our planet. The good news is that it'll take the next three billion years, give or take a few million."

      I fear no-one woud care much even if it were just three thousand years.

  14. lamont
    FAIL

    Leptons not Hadrons

    ILC is an electron-positron collider, not a proton-proton or proton-antiproton collider. Electrons and positrons are leptons, not hadrons. 500GeV per beam is sufficiently above the 125 GeV mass of the Higgs that they expect to be able to create massive numbers of Higgs particles, cleanly, without as much QCD background as the LHC produces. The LHC uses more massive particles so it can reach higher energies so is better for discovery, the ILC would be cleaner and better for precise measurement.

    The Register, as usual, gets all the details wrong in favor of attitude...

  15. Sporkinum

    basic science

    I see the need for understanding basic science, but really, what are we going to get out of this or the LHC practically?

    They must think it hold the key limitless power or jet packs or something.

    1. Nigel 11
      Thumb Down

      Re: basic science

      What did (Prof. Sir. ) Neville Mott get out of studying the field effect in the 1930s? At the time it was just theoretical physics. It wasn't even the first sort of transistor we made ....

      Curiosity has survival value, or at least always has done until now. If it hadn't, we'd have evolved out of it. (And I'm not even sure we're the most curious species. If there were a way to normalize curiosity by intellectual capacity, I'm sure cats would beat us).

  16. ItsNotMe
    Mushroom

    Me? I'm waiting for...

    ...the BFHC to be built. That'll show 'em.

  17. Dr. Ellen
    Devil

    If it's anything like the Large Hadron Collider, it'll be colliding heavy nuclei. Perhaps call it a nucleus nobbler instead of a proton punisher?

  18. AceRimmer1980
    Boffin

    That's what they're *telling us* they're building

    It's actually 'The Machine', from Contact.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Re: That's what they're *telling us* they're building

      What? are they building a Jodie Foster?

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Paris Hilton

        Re: That's what they're *telling us* they're building

        I can has one, then?

  19. Herby
    Joke

    Maybe WE should call it.....

    The Large Eadon Collider

    Could catch on, you never know

    1. Don Jefe
      Happy

      Re: Maybe WE should call it.....

      Not necessary. He's been colliding with the same brick wall for a long time and we have learned nothing useful.

  20. Pypes
    Paris Hilton

    I'm disapointed

    A whole article about a new particle colider, on el reg no less, and not a single mention of inverse femtobarns.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: I'm disapointed

      At least the we have a new meaningful measure for the enormous LHC data production: the "NSA second", once we know how large that is in byte, conversion can begin!

  21. Version 1.0 Silver badge
    Devil

    Dark Star

    "Boffins hope that as well as the God Particle, it may allow them to understand dark matter."

    No.

  22. ecofeco Silver badge
    FAIL

    Japan?

    I'm know I'm not the first but, uh, HELLO! EARTHQUAKES!!

  23. Neoc

    I can haz a name for them:

    C.U.S. : Collider of Unusual Size.

    (no extra points for naming the reference ^_^ ).

  24. elderlybloke
    WTF?

    Large Eadon Collider

    Why do some of you hate Eadon?

    Has he been caught Peeing upwind?

  25. Cuddles
    FAIL

    Electrons are not hadrons

    The ILC is a lepton collider, not a hadron collider. At least pretend to do some research before writing this crap.

    As for Japan not being the best location, the trouble with the ILC is that pretty much every other country stopped funding the idea years ago. Since Japan are the only ones still working on it, of course they're going to suggest it's built in Japan in their tentative proposal. If anyone actually decides to join and the thing has any chance of actually happening, the final location will depend entirely on who is involved and what options there actually are to choose from.

  26. Wolfhound57

    Question

    One question from someone who knows next to nothing about these machines: I thought the LHC had closed for upgrading to a more powerful spec, how much more powerful is this new gadget than the upgraded LHC?, and won't the LHC be able to study the Higgs Boson in more detail in its new upgraded form which according to the above article is one justification for the ILC?.

    1. Jess--

      Re: Question

      I think the problem with the LHC and other circular colliders is the amount of energy expended in making the particle change direction constantly (how it goes in a circle) increases the amount of extra "noise" in the experiment. A linear accelerator eliminates the problem by not having to change the particles direction (apart from minor corrections).

      Imagine how hard it would be to get a car up to 200mph while continuously driving around a roundabout, it would take huge amounts of energy and it wouldn't take long before bits were flying off the car, Now take the same car and accelerate it down a straight road, far less energy would be needed.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hardon for Leptons

    A definition of your typical particle physicist?

  28. John Tserkezis

    Cue the doomsayers.

    The new machine is significantly more powerful than the hoary European Large Hadron Collider and is likely to be sited in Japan

    Can't put it there because at the next quake, it'll create a black hole that'll swallow the earth....

    Sigh.

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