When the Large Hadron Collider discovered the Higgs Boson, or “God Paricle“, earlier this year it was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that the discovery answered the dreams of physicists worldwide, and a curse in the sense that it leads to the question “How the hell do we top this?” Bigger and better is the only way forward, but considering that the design, funding, and construction of these giant particle accelerators moves at a snail’s pace, the next generation is likely more than a generation away. Administrators of the LHC are already busy planning the upgrade of the LHC which would see the magnets of the facility boosted to increase results (once completed, the new magnets will lead to 10X the amount of data and discoveries). But a larger collider will undoubtedly need to be built. The problem is that designers need to build a machine with technology and innovations that have not yet been conceived. It’s the ultimate chicken-and-the-egg dilemma. To learn more about what happened when CERN’S European Strategy Preparatory Group met earlier this month you can read the entire feature article at Popular Science.
