Plans for world’s next major particle collider stuck in limbo

Japan’s government has said that it is not ready to commit to hosting the world’s next major particle accelerator — the planned International Linear Collider (ILC). The decision appears to deal another blow to a project that has been more than a decade in the making, although some physicists are hopeful that the government might finally be making progress on the proposal.“There was disappointment,” said Geoffrey Taylor, chair of the International Committee for Future Accelerators, at a press conference at the University of Tokyo on 7 March. The press conference followed a meeting with representatives of Japan’s science and technology ministry, who delivered a statement on the government’s position.

The particle-physics community conceived the ILC more than 15 years ago, as a follow-up to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland. The ILC would be a straight, 20-kilometre collider that would make detailed studies of the Higgs boson, the last puzzle piece in physicists’ standard model. Japan has been the only country in the running to build the US$7-billion machine, after its physicists pitched to host the facility in 2012 following the discovery of the Higgs at CERN. As host, the nation would need to pay around half the construction costs, and other countries would contribute the rest. But despite years of discussions, the government hasn’t thrown its weight behind the project and has shown little formal interest in it.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00824-4