Not
one to be outdone by the West, China is reportedly preparing to build a
super-sized particle collider that’ll dwarf the existing Large Hadron Collider operated by CERN. Chinese scientists will use its proposed Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) to study Higgs boson particles,
with the goal of learning more about the so called “God Particle” and
possibly dark matter, which makes up most of the universe.
The
CEPC collider will measure between 50 and 100 kilometers (31 to 60
miles) in circumference, which is significantly larger than the LHC,
which measures just 27 kilometers (about 17 miles) around. It will
generate seven times the energy of the LHC, allowing scientists to
potentially create millions of Higgs boson particles in a single go.
To
date, the LHC has only spotted hundreds of Higgs boson particles
because “it generates Higgs particles together with many other
particles,” explained Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High
Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. “The proposed CEPC,
however, collides electrons and positrons to create an extremely clean
environment that only produces Higgs particles. The LHC is hitting its
limits of energy level, it seems not possible to escalate the energy
dramatically at the existing facility.”