Physicists Shrink Plans for Next Major Collider
Large Hadron Collider’s failure to detect new particles beyond the Higgs has eroded the case for Japan’s proposed linear accelerator
By Edwin Cartlidge, Nature magazine on November 12, 2017
Limited funding and a dearth of newly discovered particles are forcing physicists to cut back plans for their next major accelerator project: a multibillion-dollar facility known as the International Linear Collider (ILC) in Japan.
On November 7, the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA), which oversees work on the ILC, endorsed halving the machine’s planned energy from 500 to 250 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), and shortening its proposed 33.5-kilometre-long tunnel by as much as 13 kilometres. The scaled-down version would have to forego some of its planned research such as studies of the ‘top’ flavour of quark, which is produced only at higher energies.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-shrink-plans-for-next-major-collider/
