Bigger Bang Theory: Einstein's Telescope dwarfs Large Hadron Collider

Davey Winder
Sunday, 14 September 2008 15:38

Science - Energy

So, we know that the Large Hadron Collider is big, and you might be forgiven for thinking if it is big enough, powerful enough, to get some scientists talking about it having the potential to end the world.

Forgiven, but wrong. In the world of particle physics, it would seem, bigger is better. To prove it, let me introduce you to the International Linear Collider.

Not only will the ILC be bigger than the LHC, a 31km dead straight tunnel is planned for the first stage of the project but the current baseline design already allows for an upgrade to 50km if needed.

Not only will it smash those particles together with a much higher collision energy of 500 GeV, around 70 times more powerful than the LHC which now seems a bit meek at just 7 GeV.

Not only could that be increased to a mind-boggling 1 TeV, or 1 trillion electron Volt collision during the second stage of the project if the 50km tunnel was completed.

But on top of all of that, the International Linear Collider has a really cool nickname: Einstein's Telescope.

The Royal Society of Chemistry has been trying to come up with one for the LHC but so far has only managed 'The Big Banger' and 'Colossitron' which really do not cut the mustard.

So why the need for Einstein's Telescope in the first place? Surely one end of the world machine is enough? Well, no, actually it isn't.

While it is hoped that the LHC will effectively point the way towards the answers to those universal questions, Einstein's Telescope will actually provide the missing pieces in the puzzle and solve it once and for all.

Brian Foster, professor of experimental physics at Oxford University and European director of the project explains: “The LHC smashes protons together to discover new particles but also generates lots of debris that obscures the fine detail. The ILC would be a much cleaner machine and tell us far more about their real nature.”

It is all early days for the three year old project though. Only UKP £150 million has bee spent so far, and the ILC is likely to eclipse the UKP £5 billion cost of the LHC in total. Final designs are not expected to be agreed upon and complete until 2012 at the earliest.