Advertisement
Science
ChinaScience

China can build the largest collider on Earth, CERN president says

  • Eliezer Rabinovici says he is ‘confident’ Chinese scientists can build the world’s largest particle accelerator
  • The proposed Circular Electron Positron Collider has caused much debate in China over whether it justifies the US$5 billion cost

Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
22
The CERN president has weighed in on the debate around China’s proposed particle accelerator which would dwarf Europe’s Large Hadron Collider (pictured). Photo: Keystone via AP
Dannie Peng

One of Israel’s top physicists has entered the debate over whether China should build the world’s largest collider, saying he believes the country is now capable of the feat.

Advertisement
Eliezer Rabinovici, an emeritus professor of physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who is also the president of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), said during a visit to China in early April: “Chinese scientists can build this machine.”
CERN operates the world’s biggest and most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), housed in a ring-shaped tunnel 27km (16.8 miles) in circumference beneath the Swiss-French border.

China’s proposed 36 billion yuan (US$5 billion) Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC), also known as a Higgs factory, would dwarf the LHC with a circumference of 100km.

The Chinese government has not given the final approval to the project, which has sparked widespread debate in China among the scientific community and the general public.

Advertisement

The strongest opposition has come from legendary physicist and Nobel laureate Yang Chen-ning.

Advertisement