In recent years, news has been pouring in about future accelerators that will replace the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. Will CERN succeed in building a circular accelerator with a circumference of 100 km or will the Chinese overtake it without blinking an eye? And the obvious question - where are the Americans?
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) operated under the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN as it is commonly known, is beginning to show signs of aging. According to the current plan, the accelerator is at the end of the second cycle and soon it will enter a round of renovations and upgrades in preparation for the third cycle. as which Saran previously published, the accelerator is expected to produce events for another 20 years and to continue for several more pulses, but on the scale of an axis, 20 years will pass quickly and we must start charting the future. To answer more fundamental questions, physicists must conduct experiments at higher energy scales and for nature to answer, they must pay with energy and the design of huge accelerators. When builders of accelerators usually ask the question, what phenomena would we like to see? Or rather which events (chain of decays) are the scientists curious to measure? Putting this important question aside for a moment, there is no doubt that energy plays a significant role.
In the coming month, CERN will offer the European Union a new accelerator known as the future circular collider (FCC) with a scope that can range from 80 km to 100 km to accelerate hadrons to energies of 100 TeV (as opposed to the current accelerator that has a circumference of 27 km and produces energy around the - 13 TeV). Of course, the budget for such an accelerator will be huge and the technological challenges are great as well - from huge magnets, through massive cooling, from radiation control to the coherence of the beam. These are challenges that researchers have faced in the past, but now it is on a larger scale. Of course, even if the plan is approved, it will likely take decades before the accelerator starts operating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaGJ2deZ-54
At the same time as the Europeans, the Chinese also plan to build an accelerator with a scope of 100 km and at half the cost. The Chinese accelerator (CEPC circular electron positron collider - acceleration of electrons and positrons) was designed to bombard electrons and anti-electrons (positrons) to study the Higgs particle with higher precision. Unlike proton bombardment, electron and positron bombardment makes it possible to calibrate the accelerator to precise energy scales and more easily measure the masses of the particles and the forces acting on them. Sometimes the researchers are interested in creating a wide variety of events (a chain of decays) and therefore prefer to bombard protons with each other. In order for an accelerator to be upgraded to accelerate Chinese protons, they stated that the cost would have to increase significantly. If all the Chinese plans come to fruition, it is likely that already in 2030 we will see a formidable accelerator that competes with CERN and will attract the world's scientific community to it. In recent years, the Chinese have been investing a lot of money in building accelerators of various sizes and for diverse uses (accelerators for the production of materials, medical research, chemical upgrades, research in biology and environmental sciences).
And what about the Americans? You could say they are still left behind. Political considerations have always motivated the Americans to neglect or push huge projects and unfortunately particle physics was mostly left aside. Even today, political disputes between the Chinese and the Americans make it difficult for researchers to conduct research collaborations and visit colleagues at conferences on these lands. At least today CERN will not be the main corporation in particle research and in the near future the Chinese will join the competition. An interesting and no less important point is the return of the linear accelerators in several countries, but I will expand on these in the following articles.
for further reading: The Nature article on the Chinese accelerator , About FCC on CERN's website, More on the FCC
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Is science evolving? These accelerators are not fundamentally different from trying to hit two stones together with force in order to see which of them will break and which pieces...
The Americans canceled the construction of a huge particle accelerator in the middle of construction, so the research center moved to Europe,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider
It is clear that what the Chinese want is to attract to them the best scientists in the world who lived in China
In the middle of the last century, the USA benefited from the best European scientists who fled to it with all their knowledge,
If she doesn't invest enough, she will become a side player in these areas,
It's not just the theoretical field, it's all the technological progress that is needed to build the accelerator that advances the country,
Advanced material computing systems, etc.
What will not work at 13 TeV will work at 100 TeV. According to the same logic, what doesn't go at 100 TeV will go at 500 TeV, let's say, etc. - what doesn't go with power will go with more power, and to paraphrase - "it goes all the way up and up".
So where is the theoretical upper limit - in terms of the physical theory of the standard model and in terms of calculation ability?
In any case - it is clear that there is an upper limit in terms of the engineering ability to produce and control high energies. There will be a limit to this scientific research, which is mainly experimental, the result of the means and technological knowledge that will be available and known within a generation, two or three, and in the existing paradigmatic concept of a standard model, a model that is not without gaps.
This concept is becoming more and more apparent today as a rather "primitive" science of physics, despite the enormous achievements in uncovering findings and its incredible level of sophistication. - This, similar to certain experimental/observational theories in the past, which were altogether "primitive" on a conceptual level and in methodology (for example - Tycho Brahe's very elaborate theory).
At some point, the research effort will have to undergo a paradigm shift, while creating a new and refined conceptual horizon. History has known such revolutions in the past, which each time created new science at the conceptual level and predictive achievements, and over time also technological applications. In particular, recent history has seen such revolutions - in the form of the theory of relativity (also the particular, and especially - the extended one), and the quantum theory.
It seems to me that the doubts expressed in the article regarding the US's share in the scientific effort, require renewed consideration. The culture that will breed the individual genius, and more likely - the group of extraordinary geniuses - that will produce the paradigmatic revolution, should be particularly creative and powerful. In general - the Western scientific community seems exemplary. In particular, European culture is in a slow process of degeneration and relative decline in many fields, and this will have an impact on the scientific field as well. Chinese culture, as an authoritarian culture - does not seem particularly creative. Therefore - with all the shortcomings of the American culture, it seems like a more reasonable candidate. As the article points out, the USA does not currently invest in research in the field of large accelerators. But it still has the best scientific and economic infrastructures and the most excellent scientific human resources from all over the world flow to it, and in addition - it has demonstrated in the past an impressive and creative administrative ability in initiating and leveraging unique scientific projects. These facts may create the infrastructure for the next paradigmatic leap.