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Stephen Hawking encourages China to build hadron collider

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Stephen Hawking encourages China to build hadron collider
2016-11-28 10:19 | People's Daily Online | Editor: Li Yan

Many renowned Chinese and foreign physicists have joined a discussion about whether China should build a next-generation large hadron collider. Britain physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking is encouraging China to do just that.

"China has an incredible opportunity to become the world leader here — don't waste it. A good example is to build the Great Collider that can lead high energy physics for the next fifty years," Hawking wrote.

Well-known mathematician Shing-Tung Yau is in favor of Hawking's suggestion, and proposed that China choose a place near Shanhai Pass in Qinhuandao, Hebei province as its building site. Meanwhile, Chen Ning Yang, Nobel Laureate in Physics, openly opposed the idea in September, though Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High-Energy Physics (IHEP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, refuted Chen's objections.

The discussion goes beyond China's borders. Philip Warren Anderson, an American physicist and Nobel laureate, is among the opponents of the plan, while David Jonathan Gross, an American theoretical physicist and string theorist, is a proponent.

Also important to mention is that the world's current largest hadron collider is the LHC at CERN. It helped scientists to discover the Higgs boson, which is regarded as the last building block of the model.

Below is the original text by Hawking:

Particle physics is definitely not a dying field. It is however an entirely different enterprise than it was in 1980. Since then, the standard model looks to be essentially confirmed and this may give the impression that the field is complete. However, that is far from being true. There are phenomena that are just not included in the standard model. Some are CP violation, neutrino oscillations, dark matter. In theory, the problems are immense: how to include gravity, the recently discovered dualities of quantum field theories, quark confinement, dark energy, black holes, early-universe cosmology. It is a different world but one that offers huge challenges to ambitious young people interested in how our Universe works. China has an incredible opportunity to become the world leader here — don't waste it. A good example is to build the Great Collider that can lead high energy physics for the next fifty years.


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This thing doesn't come cheap. If it is beneficial to China, then do it.
Otherwise, the scientists can scream and yell all they want.
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I totally support the suggestion by my prof. Stephen Hawking. It will be great for China, Asia and particle physics :)
 
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The Large Hadron Collider
CERN Document Server

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. It first started up on 10 September 2008, and remains the latest addition to CERN’s accelerator complex. The LHC consists of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way.

Inside the accelerator, two high-energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light before they are made to collide. The beams travel in opposite directions in separate beam pipes – two tubes kept at ultrahigh vacuum. They are guided around the accelerator ring by a strong magnetic field maintained by superconducting electromagnets. The electromagnets are built from coils of special electric cable that operates in a superconducting state, efficiently conducting electricity without resistance or loss of energy. This requires chilling the magnets to ‑271.3°C – a temperature colder than outer space. For this reason, much of the accelerator is connected to a distribution system of liquid helium, which cools the magnets, as well as to other supply services.

lhc_long_1.jpg

The Large Hadron Collider is the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator (Image: CERN)
Thousands of magnets of different varieties and sizes are used to direct the beams around the accelerator. These include 1232 dipole magnets 15 metres in length which bend the beams, and 392 quadrupole magnets, each 5–7 metres long, which focus the beams. Just prior to collision, another type of magnet is used to "squeeze" the particles closer together to increase the chances of collisions. The particles are so tiny that the task of making them collide is akin to firing two needles 10 kilometres apart with such precision that they meet halfway.

All the controls for the accelerator, its services and technical infrastructure are housed under one roof at the CERN Control Centre. From here, the beams inside the LHC are made to collide at four locations around the accelerator ring, corresponding to the positions of four particle detectorsATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb.

Explore the CERN Control Centre with Google Street View (Image: Google Street View)




Facts and Figures [PDF]
How many kilometres of cables are there on the LHC? How low is the pressure in the beam pipe? Discover facts and figures about the in the handy LHC guide

Download the LHC guide [PDF]


Safety of the LHC
CERN takes safety very seriously. This report by the LHC Safety Assessment Group (LSAG) confirms that LHC collisions present no danger and that there are no reasons for concern

Read about the safety of the LHC
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EXTREMELY DIFFICULT FOR NORMAL PEOPLE LIKE ME TO UNDERSTAND.
 
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