But that is how science functions. A new insight can open a door and it's then up to other researchers to choose whether to venture through it, sometimes decades later, to develop practical applications. For example, the fact that we live in an age of electronics did not come down to a single discovery overnight. Its roots can be traced to the brilliant theorisers and experimenters who did fundamental work back in the 19th century - Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell and J.
Thomson to name but a few. So who knows if the Higgs boson or dark matter particles or extra dimensions may eventually lead to some similarly huge leap in the next years? The Cern case is that we will never know unless the basic job of exploration is done now.
Back in the s, when Nasa was under pressure to justify the cost of the Apollo moon landings, it resorted to highlighting spin-offs. The lunar missions, it argued, had given technology a unique boost and produced such wonders as miniaturised electronics and the non-stick frying-pan.
And that kind of spin-off is another key part of Cern's case. It can claim credit for inventing a system for sharing data around the globe: the World Wide Web. Born of fundamental research which at the time might have felt irrelevant, it enables you to read this article now. Short circuit delays LHC restart. Dancing in the dark: The search for the 'missing Universe'. LHC restart: 'We want to break physics'. Collider hopes for a 'super' restart.
LHC scientists to search for 'fifth force of Nature'. Higgs boson spills secrets as LHC prepared for return. Until today, several other options were on the table for a next-generation collider, but the CERN Council has now made an unambiguous, unanimous statement. The decision comes in a document approved today — the Update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics.
It outlines two stages of development. First, CERN would build an electron—positron collider with collision energies tuned to maximize the production of Higgs bosons and understand their properties in detail. Later in the century, the first machine would be dismantled and replaced by a proton—proton smasher.
That would reach collision energies of teraelectronvolts TeV , compared with the 14 TeV of the LHC, which also collides protons and is currently the most powerful accelerator in the world. Its goal would be to search for new particles or forces of nature and to extend or replace the current standard model of particle physics. Much of the technology that the final machine will require has yet to be developed, and will be the subject of intensive study in coming decades.
While fully endorsing a CERN circular collider, the strategy also calls for the organization to explore participation in a separate International Linear Collider ILC , an older idea that has been kept alive by physicists in Japan. Hitoshi Yamamoto, a physicist at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, says the endorsement is encouraging. But before CERN can start building its new machine, it will have to seek new funding beyond the regular budget it receives from member states.
The costly plan has its detractors — even in the physics community. Sabine Hossenfelder, a theoretical physicist at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany, has emerged as a critic of pursuing ever-higher energies, when the scientific payback — apart from measuring the properties of known particles — is far from guaranteed. I just think there is not enough scientific potential in doing that kind of study right now.
Correction 23 June : An earlier version of this story misstated the energy at which the Large Hadron Collider can operate. She made up a parody of a song in Disney's "Frozen. The LHC will start churning out new data at this unprecedented energy level next week, and we can't wait to see what happens. For you. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Get the Insider App.
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