Beijing, July 26: Scientists behind the European atom smasher aimed at uncovering the secrets of the universe want to build an even bigger machine with partners and funds from around the world.
Scientists from CERN - the European Organisation for Nuclear Research - a particle physics laboratory outside Geneva, Switzerland, will spell out their ambitions at a conference in Paris today.
They are reaching out to China, India and Russia to help fund the next £8.5 billion step of the project, according to Guy Wormser, a leading particle physicist and one of the conference organisers.
Instead of whirling atoms in giant rings, as CERN's Large Hadron Collider and the smaller Tevatron at Fermilab, near Chicago, do, scientists want a new-generation machine that will shoot them straight.
The new machine would be a successor to the £7 billion LHC, which was launched with great fanfare in September 2008, but days later was sidetracked by overheating that set off a chain of problems.
CERN had to undertake a £26 million programme of repairs and improvements before restarting the machine last November. Since then the collider has reported a series of successes.
In March it saw the first collisions of two proton beams.
Plans for the next step, a 31-mile tunnel called the International Linear Collider, have long been under discussion and scientists now need to find funding, Mr Wormser said. They hope the machine could be turned on in 2020 or 2025.
With the LHC "we made a machine which allowed us to make a big leap in understanding, a sort of enlightener, and now we study and detail things and that's the linear collider", he said.
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