On Sun, 21 Nov 2010, Keith Hudson wrote: > Pete, > > Here's a question that I often think about. There's no doubt that CERN will > reveal a host of interesting findings. Almost certainly a host of new > questions will then emerge. For this, if the past is any guide, a new and > much more powerful accelerator will be necessary. The present one has only > been possible as a joint effort by several countries. The next one might > require funding by the whole world. Even if this were possible, yet another > even more expensive might be necessary. What do CERN scientists think about > this? They must surely be asking this question between themselves. > > Keith
Well, twenty years ago, the US was still intending to build their "Superconducting SuperCollider", which I think was cancelled in 1994 or 5. At that point, the wisdom in the community was that the order of magnitude expansions of the major accelerators, with their associated cost increments, meant that now there was money for only one "world" machine, that being the LHC. It was also expected at that time that the cost incrememnt for another order of magnitude expansion for any machine beyond the LHC would put it beyond the reach of reasonable funding expectations. Thus the LHC was widely viewed as the last great accelerator. However, that has not stopped discussion of further machines at the top end. It also certainly has not stopped the construction of middle energy machines. The T2K neutrino experiment I've been working on in Japan is fed from a new midrange (running 30GeV, eventual target 50GeV) accelerator facility which was built from the ground up between 2002 and 2009. Several "infill" machines are being built to further explore intermediate energies, focussing on various specialties, such as neutrons, or synchrotron light, or, as here at TRIUMF, the acceleration of ions; in our case, radioactive isotope ions produced by the original accelerator. In fact, for the last six months I've been on loan to the accelerator division to help with the development of a new electron beam line intended to augment the exotic isotope production here, by driving electrons into heavy nuclei to turn protons into neutrons, thus providing heavy neutron rich isotopes, to fill out that part of the isotope chart which has been conspicuously sparse, as most isotope production until now has been by driving protons into nuclei. Regarding new top end machines, I believe that still no one believes there's a chance of a next-generation hadron (proton or ion) machine. Nothing has advanced in the technology yet to make such a machine any cheaper than it looked 20 years ago. However, there is an earnest effort to develop a linear electron accelerator-collider at an energy comparable to the LHC. The beamline would be up to 30 miles long. They have a website here: http://www.linearcollider.org/ Electron machines are considerably cheaper than hadron machines for the same energy, so it is thought to be not totally out of reach financially. Although this has been pushed by its supporters for quite a while, there is still nothing concrete, such as a selected site and a final design. whether it ever happens remains to be seen. -Pete _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
