New giant particle collider ‘right option for science’, says next Cern chief
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British physicist Mark Thomson takes the helm of Europe’s Cern lab where the famous “God particle” was discovered.
PHOTO: AFP
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GENEVA – The next head of Europe’s Cern physics laboratory said on Nov 7 he favoured moving forward with plans for a giant particle collider that would dwarf the facility that discovered the famous “God particle”.
“Scientifically, I am convinced it is the right option,” Dr Mark Thomson, whom Cern has tapped to be its next director-general, said of preliminary plans for the Future Circular Collider (FCC).
It is “the right option for Cern, the right option for science”, the British physicist said during an online news conference a day after Cern said he would be taking the helm for a five-year term starting in January 2026.
“Absolutely, I wish to pursue that route,” he said.
The Cern lab, which straddles the border between France and Switzerland, seeks to unravel what the universe is made of and how it works.
Its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – a 27km proton-smashing ring running about 100m below ground – has among other things been used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson
The LHC is expected to have fully run its course by around 2040, and Cern is considering building a far larger collider to allow scientists to keep pushing the envelope.
A feasibility study is under way for the 91km FCC, which Cern estimated earlier in 2024 will cost around US$17 billion (S$22 billion).
Dr Thomson, currently the executive chair of Britain’s Science and Technology Facilities Council and an experimental particle physics professor at Cambridge University, hailed the efforts to fully grasp the costs involved, saying a final decision was still several years off.
“There is time to build a very, very strong consensus around the project based on the clear scientific argument” for it, he said.
At Cern, Dr Thomson will replace Italian physicist Fabiola Gianotti, who a decade ago was chosen as the first woman to lead the lab. She has also expressed support for the FCC project. AFP
