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posted by mrpg on Sunday November 18 2018, @04:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the cheap dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

China unveils design for $5 billion particle smasher

The center of gravity in high energy physics could move to Asia if either of two grand plans is realized. At a workshop here last week, Chinese scientists unveiled the full conceptual design for the proposed Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC), a $5 billion machine to tackle the next big challenge in particle physics: studying the Higgs boson. (Part of the design was published in the summer.) Now, they’re ready to develop detailed plans, start construction in 2022, and launch operations around 2030—if the Chinese government agrees to fund it.

Meanwhile, Japan’s government is due to decide by the end of December whether to host an equally costly machine to study the Higgs, the International Linear Collider (ILC). How Japan’s decision might affect China’s, which is a few years away, is unclear. But it seems increasingly likely that most of the future action around the Higgs will be in Asia. Proposed “Higgs factories” in Europe are decades away and the United States has no serious plans.

The Higgs boson, key to explaining how other particles gain mass, was discovered at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, in 2012—more than 40 years after being theoretically predicted. Now, scientists want to confirm the particle’s properties, how it interacts with other particles, and whether it contributes to dark matter. Having only mass but no spin and no charge, the Higgs is really a “new kind of elementary particle” that is both “a special part of the standard model” and a “harbinger of some profound new principles,” says Nima Arkani-Hamed, a theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Answering the most important questions in particle physics today “involves studying the Higgs to death,” he says.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 18 2018, @05:29PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 18 2018, @05:29PM (#763555)

    Reference recent article, https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/11/06/0127250 [soylentnews.org]
        "China Still Has Trouble Staffing the World's Largest Radio Telescope"

    Once China finishes building this "smasher", the head hunters will go out to find a chief scientist for the facility...who will be offered a one year contract for not-very-much. Operator jobs will go unfilled since they pay about 100,000 yuan, or $14,400 annually. Facility will sit vacant for lack of qualified operating personnel.

    Or maybe the budget will be withdrawn part way through--a big-physics flop like the superconducting super collider in Texas, remember that?
        https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-supercollider-that-never-was/ [scientificamerican.com]
    Anyone been exploring down in the tunnels? I hear that it's isn't too hard to get in there for an (unofficial) look around.

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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday November 18 2018, @06:31PM (1 child)

    by Gaaark (41) on Sunday November 18 2018, @06:31PM (#763571) Journal

    They'll just start out-sourcing their jobs to Americans: then THEY will be the ones saying "I don't UNDERSTAND YOU... SPEAK MANDARIN!..... could i get a supervisor who speaks Mandarin PLEASE!... these damn Engrishers...."

    (Oh yeah... Engrishers.... i went there.)

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 18 2018, @10:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 18 2018, @10:33PM (#763648)

      No no, you have a point. You don't haaave to speak English to be racist.

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Sunday November 18 2018, @06:56PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Sunday November 18 2018, @06:56PM (#763578)

    I was gonna post that but you beat me to it.

    Local construction firms, and advanced tech companies, will still be glad to get a multi-billion facility with guaranteed financing to build, regardless of whether it's ever powered up.
    While CERN is nice to physicists and their theories, it's been even better for their suppliers who like cold hard cash

  • (Score: 2) by legont on Sunday November 18 2018, @08:13PM (1 child)

    by legont (4179) on Sunday November 18 2018, @08:13PM (#763600)

    That's the whole point. They want to build enough momentum so scientists will move to China or at least not leave.

    Here is what happened when the US let it be moved to Europe.
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/us-researchers-are-switcthing-to-lhc/ [scientificamerican.com]

    --
    "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
    • (Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Sunday November 18 2018, @09:34PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 18 2018, @09:34PM (#763611) Journal

      Oh, God, the horror! The US scientists needed to brush their French.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday November 19 2018, @09:35AM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday November 19 2018, @09:35AM (#763827) Homepage
    What a horrifically biased and unscientific article. Oh, it's Scientific American, I guess that's to be expected.

    Detection of the Higgs was *not* a function of the maximum energy of the LHC, as long as the beam energy is sufficient, it's a function of the tech that's behind the detectors. This could not have been done in the 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATLAS_experiment#Data_systems_and_analysis simply from a comms point of view. The SSC having a higher maximum beam energy would have not helped much, it would have been effectively looking for the Higgs in the wrong place, and perhaps drowning those interactions with other ones.

    It's still a shame it was cancelled, but to claim it definitely would have achieved something concrete is speculative at best.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves