Our colleague, Barry Barish, shared the 2017 Nobel Prize with Rainer Weiss and Kip Thorne for his leadership role in the direct detection of gravitational waves by LIGO in 2015. Following his leadership on LIGO from 1994 through 2005 for which the Prize was awarded, Barry led the ILC community as Director of the Global […]
How great does the ‘Great Wall’ have to be?
The question how great the (ILC tunnel’s) Great Wall needs to be was answered for the Kamaboko tunnel design at the Kitakami site by the final decision of the Change Management Board to a Change Request (ILC-CR-0012) for the 25-kilometre linear-accelerator (linac) sections of the ILC. The shield wall in the ‘Kamaboko’ shape tunnel , […]
New working group toward ILC in Japan meets for the first time
Getting the best people from all over the world is one of the biggest challenges to realise the International Linear Collider, the next-generation electron-positron collider. That’s why there’s a new working group on human resources, called into being by Japan’s ILC Advisory Panel, to tackle the issue before the ILC has even been approved. On […]
SLAC inaugurates a new era for the future ILC (twice)
A group of SLAC physicists and engineers celebrate the handover of the ILC Technical Design Report.
The University of Tokyo, CERN and Fermilab weren’t the only locations celebrating the handover of the International Linear Collider’s (ILC) Technical Design Report on 12 June. SLAC employees who have worked on the ILC had a party of their own: the group watched a live stream of the American event and enjoyed a cake topped […]
Moving from emotions to negotiations
We particle physicists have lived through some exciting times recently. A few years ago, the world witnessed live when the LHC was switched on for the first time (to my countdown). A few days later, one of the interconnects broke, and it took us more than a year to get the LHC back into shape. […]
Press release: Next-generation particle accelerator is ready for construction
International Linear Collider publishes its Technical Design Report
Tokyo, Geneva, Chicago – 12 June 2013. A five-volume report containing the blueprint for a future particle physics project, the International Linear Collider (ILC), was published today. In three consecutive ceremonies in Asia, Europe and the Americas, the authors of the Technical Design Report for the International Linear Collider, a next-generation particle collider to complement […]
The Global Design Effort completes its mandate in style and substance
The Global Design Effort has completed its mandate to produce a technical design for the ILC. Yesterday’s official handover of the Technical Design Report to the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) was the culmination of a celebratory three continent event this week. The discovery of a Higgs particle at the LHC at CERN, the […]
Le roi est mort, vive le roi ! (*)
The Global Design Effort (GDE) has successfully completed the R&D programme outlined back in 2006, and with the Technical Design Report (TDR) effectively complete and a cost estimate based on the TDR design done, the future programme must be addressed. The major new factor is the very real possibility that Japan may proceed with a […]
ILC TDR cost under review
The final deliverable of the Global Design Effort, the ILC Technical Design Report, was completed and submitted in draft form to the International Linear Collider Steering Committee (ILCSC) in November 2012. Following a successful technical review in December, an international cost review of the TDR ILC value estimate was chaired by Norbert Holtkamp of SLAC […]
From technology to diplomacy
Let me take this opportunity to acknowledge the enormous achievement of the very small GDE team, led by Barry Barish. They have produced the Technical Design Report, which has been favourably reviewed by an independent expert committee. The TDR also contains a detailed cost estimate which has also been independently reviewed and has proved to […]