The folks behind the proposed International Linear Collider (ILC), a next-gen particle smasher that would complement Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), have posted a slick new Web site explaining why their project is worth funding.
Old particle physics hands probably won't find anything new here, but for newcomers to the subject, people looking to catch up on recent discoveries and goals, or those trying to understand why two multi-billion dollar accelerators are necessary, the site is worth a visit. It offers a summary of the science involved, a useful outline of the ILC design and technical challenges, and a call to industry to help develop the tools needed.
A quick refresher: The LHC, slated to open next spring (or maybe summer, if rumors of still more delays are true), will be the most powerful particle accelerator ever created, with a good chance of finding evidence of the long-sought Higgs particle (dubbed the "God Particle" by some, and believed to be responsible for giving everything in the universe mass), and possibly experimental evidence for supersymmetry, extra dimensions, and other more speculative notions.
But for all its power, the LHC will be a fairly blunt tool, without the precision to study what it finds in fine detail. Scientists say the
ILC, which will collide electrons and positrons instead of protons, will give them the precision to dig into and understand the results unearthed by the LHC.
A design has been proposed, with a price tag of $6.6 billion, excluding labor costs. Now backers are in the political stage, trying to figure out where it will be sited, and who will pay for it. Already it's been a deeply cooperative project on the international scale, but governments around the world are likely to be skeptical of anything with such a high cost.
The new Web site is in some sense a sales brochure, aimed at the non-scientists who will ultimately be responsible for giving the project a green light. But as brochures go, this one's a winner.
International Linear Collider: Gateway to the Quantum Universe
(Image credit: ILC)
