At the end of May 2017, scientists from all over the world met in Berlin to discuss the successor to the Large Hadron Collider, the particle accelerator at CERN. The new one is called the Future Circular Collider, or FCC, which will be up to three times larger and seven times more powerful than the current LHC aiming to simulate energy levels much closer to those seen during the ‘Big Bang’. I heard about the project from physicist Carsten Welsch at the University of Liverpool…

• The new FCC aims to give us access to higher energy levels and ultimately take us closer to the conditions seen at the ‘Big Bang’ in order to discover further new particles such as the Higgs Boson.
• Currently, the performance of the LHC is limited by the technology of magnets, which are needed to bend the particle beam around the 27 kilometre loop. The FCC will need stronger magnets or a larger tunnel.
• Discoveries from particle physics have led to applications such as the internet, mobile communications and NMR diagnostics in hospitals.
• The FCC project consists of an international community of academics who are looking into what will be required to build the new machine.
• 20 years in the future the LHC will come to the end of its lifetime and so we need to act now to engage school kids today to think about a career in science.

 

You can listen to the full interview for the Naked Scientists here.