CERN, Europe’s largest physics laboratory, has said there are no technical obstacles in its proposal to replace the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) with the supersized Future Circular Collider (FCC) to enable more advanced science experiments.
The FCC, which was first proposed in 2014, would cost an estimated $17bn (£13bn) with a circumference of 90.7km, an average depth of 200 metres and eight surface sites for up to four experiments. In comparison, the LHC is just 27km long, which limits the number and type of experiments that can be carried out. The high cost of investment would be distributed over a period of about 12 years, starting in the early 2030s, and the majority of the funding would come from CERN’s current annual budget.
An FCC feasibility study outlines two stages: an electron–positron collider serving as a Higgs, electroweak and top-quark factory, followed at a later stage by a proton–proton collider, similar to the LHC but achieving much greater collision energy.
If built, the...