Beyond the Large Hadron Collider

Some scientists are already looking beyond the Large Hadron Collider and onto the next generation of ultimega-atom-smasher. That's because scientists actually plan things and can concentrate for longer than four seconds, unlike the mass media which reports on them. One potential particle pulverising system is a muon collider: the latest concept in the cutting edge that parts particles

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Yes let us do this....FOR SCIENCE!!!! MWHAHAHAHA

wonder how many cans of worms is this going to open up.
The current one has already(allegedly) caused a temporal loop.
But in all fairness this will lead to many great discoveries for humanity.
The way i see it if it has the potential to destroy the universe ET races might want to interfere....if not it may just unlock star travel for us.
The risk is worth the rewards isnt it?

I personally think the risk is worth it. I mean if it's worth doing, let's do it right and put all our cards on the table (risking the universe)!

Now if we could just get the current one to work properly.... Sometimes I wonder if they do actually find something so bizarre, like an alternate universe, we will be the last to find out...

There is no credible risk. The doomsday scenarios imagined by some were theoretical worst case scenarios of what theoretically might happen if certain nearly impossible events were to all take place together. Oh, and if the Universe actually worked the way the theorist imagined, which we have no evidence of it doing.

I'm more concerned about the cost. LHC is already the biggest machine ever made. How much bigger can you go? At some point you're just going to run out of space, not to mention money.

The US spent millions (or was it billions?) of dollars on the SCSC, another atom smashing device. Then they abandoned it as "too costly". So who's going to fund the next generation of these machines? We didn't even want to pay for the last one.

reply to post by chiron613


I heard once that to detect the highest energy particles we may need to build a collision ring the size of the earth's orbit.

[edit on 23-11-2009 by john124]

reply to post by john124


It is indeed conceivable that within our lifetimes we may see a space-based particle accelerator. It really makes sense.

While the construction of such a monstrosity is well beyond our capabilities today, it is certainly possible within the next 50-70 years. If the scientific discoveries with the LHC are even half as fruitful as the long-running Fermilab tevatron (and before that 'main ring'), there is no question that particle accelerators will continue to be designed, and funded/constructed.

Presumably 20 years from now, the LHC will be old and 'ready for retirement', at which point the next step will be considered. By then, China will be a much larger player than they already are on the world stage, and Russia will likely be even more of a player as well. Those two nations alone have vast amounts of land that would be ideally suited for the next generation of particle accelerators.

20-30 years of such an accelerator running, the next logical step is accelerators in space. There are unique challenges to such an endeavor, however the scientific potential for something of this magnitude is astronomical (no pun intended). The environment of space is vastly different than a 20 feet below the earth's surface, as such the type of research that can be done with something like this would be tremendous.

There is also the added benefit of safety. Should a particle accelerator run into that "worse case scenario", it would be much more beneficial for said accelerator to be far from earth, perhaps near the orbit of Venus. As our technology grows, it is well within reason for components for a particle accelerator such as this to be built on earth, and later sent up as payloads aboard robotic-based crafts. In theory such a device could be assembled in space without a single human going near it. Once assembled, should the worse occur (massive explosion/implosion), the risk to earth becomes minimal.

Of course, a doomsday scenario where it creates a 'valid' black hole would eventually consume our entire solar system, sadly starting with the Sun due to gravitational pull, but the odds of such an event are remote, with the LHC now, and with any future accelerator.

Funding is fueled by the profitability of the science that is achieved through predecessors to such a device. If the LHC yields good science that leads to advancement in human technology and understanding, that in turn translates into profitability for governments and corporations that make use of that science, who in turn fund future endeavors that may yield even better science.

If the LHC is a bust, and we learn nothing significant beyond what older particle accelerators have been able to teach us, then of course funding would never occur for something like this.

Building a space based particle accelerator will be immensely hard but it might be plausible to build one on the asteroid belt using asteroids as mooring points.
But the size of a structure this size will be HUGE. Larger than this planet maybe......
Or maybe one day we may build one on a Dyson sphere. But if we have the tech to build that i don't think building a particle accel would be much of a problem at all.
I wonder what kind of effect it might have on us?

Truth is the LHC only has one function and is pretty much useless for anything else that is how it was designed and if they don't find the higgs which I'm confident they won't it will go down as the biggest waste of money in history.

Of course the physicists sitting in their ivory towers will want a bigger one because that's all that matters to them and they can't see anything else.

If there are to be any more particle colliders of this size or larger... then build them in space - far distant from the Earth and Moon. And move all other life-threatening science research (modified microbes, etc.) to that distant space location. I would suggest a location near the asteroid belt, for the material already there to build it with.

i don not know a lot about particle physics so can any one help me understand what higgs boson particles are?
From what i can gather they are particles which give mass to matter. is this true? if so can this lead to some ubercool mass effect style tech? Maybe even the force?:-)