The European Centre for Particle Research, 'CERN', has submitted proposals for a new particle accelerator.
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00:00 So the Large Hadron Collider is our facility for investigating particle physics, the science
00:08 that tries to tell us what the universe is made of at the very smallest scales.
00:13 It's the biggest machine we've ever made for science and it's situated in Geneva in Switzerland.
00:19 Well speaking of big, the Future Circular Collider, it doesn't exist yet, what is being
00:25 proposed?
00:27 So this is a next generation particle physics facility and the proposal is this will be
00:33 the facility that takes over from the Large Hadron Collider when that stops taking data
00:38 in 2040.
00:40 And the FCC, the Future Circular Collider, is going to be even bigger.
00:45 So that's going to be, it's designed to be 91 kilometres round, 27 kilometres of the
00:53 Large Hadron Collider just shrinks in comparison and it's due to, well it's proposed to start
00:59 taking data in 2045, 2048 and then carry on for virtually the rest of the century.
01:06 And what's the motivation for it in terms of what it'll be able to do that the hadron
01:10 can't?
01:13 So it's really designed to be a discovery machine and a good way to think about it is
01:18 if you want to understand the universe and you want to have a more powerful telescope,
01:24 you build one that lets you see further and it lets you see everything around you in more
01:28 detail.
01:29 Well, we do the same but our equipment, rather than being a telescope, is like an enormously
01:35 powerful microscope.
01:37 So for us to make progress in looking at the smallest constituents of the universe, the
01:42 small building blocks that ultimately make up atoms and stars, then we build a microscope
01:47 that gets as powerful as it can be and that looks at everything in as sharp a resolution
01:53 as possible.
01:55 And the FCC is the next step up in microscope resolving power and ability to look into the
02:02 very smallest reaches of the universe for us.
02:06 And armed with that knowledge, what does it mean practically?
02:11 So from our point of view as scientists, it's going to be the facility that tells us much
02:16 more about the Higgs boson, this famous particle that was discovered at the Large Hadron Collider,
02:22 because only a facility like the Future Circular Collider can tell us many of the facets of
02:27 this particle that we can then relate into some fundamental knowledge of.
02:32 Is the universe stable?
02:35 Why are the forces that govern the size of atoms and their stability the size that they
02:40 are and so on?
02:41 It can address many, many fundamental questions for us.
02:45 But more than the science, it's the technology that we develop to achieve this is going to
02:50 be absolutely massive.
02:52 It's going to have so many uses.
02:54 This facility is going to demand really energy efficient refrigeration and cryogenics and
03:00 that has applications all over the place and transportation and communication and medical
03:07 physics.
03:08 The really strong magnets that we need to invent, well, they can find uses in fusion
03:15 and the vacuum technology that we invent, well, that can help solar panels be more efficient.
03:21 All these novel materials that somehow need to come into existence if we're going to achieve
03:25 this are going to be so useful elsewhere as well.
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