12 July

At the top of the wish list is a new collider. The options are a super high-energy version of the circular Large Hadron Collider, which provided evidence that the so-called God particle exists, or a linear collider, which would explore the questions of deep physics and the earliest moments.

Tačiau bėda ta, kad reikiamos energijos elektronų-pozitronų greitintuvas būtų dar didesnis nei LHC. Pasiūlymas statyti tokį įrenginį, Tarptautinį linijinį greitintuvą (angl. International Linear Collider, ILC), pateiktas jau senokai, tačiau turint omenyje 20 mlrd. JAV dolerių siekiančią jo kainą, norą prisidėti išreiškė vos kelios šalys.

Already the lab has been laying the groundwork for several new endeavors at the frontiers of physics — a high-intensity proton accelerator, equipment for the Dark Energy Survey that will help scientists understand the cosmic frontier, and a proposed International Linear Collider that would complement the work being done at CERN.

Particle physicists’ traditional answer to this problem has been to suggest building a machine to collide electrons and their antiparticles, positrons. Unlike protons, electrons are elementary particles, so don’t disintegrate on impact, making it clearer what is produced when they collide.