Officials at Cern, home to the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, are pressing ahead with plans for a new machine that would be at least three times bigger than the existing particle accelerator.

The Large Hadron Collider, built inside a 27km circular tunnel beneath the Swiss-French countryside, smashes together protons and other subatomic particles at close to the speed of light to recreate the conditions that existed fractions of a second after the big bang.

The machine, the world’s largest collider, was used in the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, nearly 50 years after the particle was proposed by Peter Higgs, the theoretical physicist at the University of Edinburgh, and several other researchers. The feat was honoured with the Nobel prize in physics the following year.

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[–] Pothetato@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I know a guy who can do it cheaper. Seriously though, there has to be a better way to do this. What about that laser based accelerator. LWFA? That seemed pretty neat.

[–] stoicferret@lemmy.world 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm ALMOST certain that people at cern really know their stuff.

[–] RupertMcClanahan@lemm.ee 4 points 9 months ago

Would you say you are Cerntain?