How the Large Hadron Collider's successor will hunt for the dark universe

[Judi Lynn]

By Robert Lea published about 20 hours ago

CERN has revealed plans for the Future Circular Collider, which will dwarf the Large Hadron Collider in size and power and hunt for the missing 95% of our universe.


Planning is well underway for the successor to the world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The new "atom smasher," named the Future Circular Collider (FCC), will dwarf the LHC in size and power. It will smash particles together with so much energy, in fact, that scientists say it may be capable of investigating our universe's most mysterious entities: Dark energy and dark matter.

LHC operators at CERN revealed the results of a "midterm review" of their FCC Feasibility Study to the press on Monday (Feb. 5). The feasibility study began in 2021 and is set to conclude in 2025. The findings thus far constitute three years of work, with scientists and engineers from across the globe determining the placement of the new accelerator's ring, the implementation of the FCC facility, concepts for detectors and funding aspects.

The FCC will run under the jurisdiction of France and Switzerland, just like the LHC currently does, but the future accelerator will stretch 56.5 miles (90.7 kilometers), making it over three times the length of CERN's current particle accelerator, which is 16.8 miles (27 kilometers) long. The LHC is the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world.

The FCC will operate in the same way as the LHC, accelerating charged particles around a loop, using superconducting magnets, then smashing them together as they approach the speed of light.

More:
https://www.space.com/dark-energy-dark-matter-large-hadron-collider-successor