
CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider - AliCollins
https://www.engadget.com/cern-super-collider-higgs-boson-particle-092412017.html
======
noobermin
Made this comment below but spending billions on another collider in an
attempt to essentially validate SUSY is irresponsible. A few years ago, a
bunch of physical philosophers tried to justify this turn of particle physics
in general away from experiment, particularly suggesting the search of
symmetries and mathematical beauty (I guess) was enough of a justification for
the work even though it essentially is contrary to the basic scientific
principles of relying on experiment and observation. Now, we're seeing real
world consequences of that mistake, billions in resources and potentially
decades of man-hours to be devoted to another super-collider.

Honestly, this money could be spent on myriad other projects, not to mention
towards fusion research or alternative energies (solar, wind) in general
especially in the face of climate change. Again, seeing the failure of the LHC
and then deciding you're going to double down is just straight irresponsible.
I honestly wonder what member states are thinking when they see CERN
contemplate this especially after the LHC failed to find SUSY particles.

This is just another painful reminder of how narrow minded some scientists are
and so focused on their own little niche. There are so many larger problems
the world is facing today, it's upsetting but not surprising no one at the
table even asked the most important questions when making these plans, "is
this even necessary?"

Last tidbit, there are next generation acceleration schemes using lasers that
could promise much cheaper acceleration of particles on a much smaller scale
(centimeters) although the brightness and general beam quality isn't quite
there yet. That could be a potential route forward and be much cheaper in the
long run, it just would require a) some time and research but more importantly
b) the current crop of experimental scientists at CERN might find it not their
expertise and so might not get the grants. Again, reiterating the narrow
mindedness of scientists these days.

~~~
paganel
> Made this comment below but spending billions on another collider in an
> attempt to essentially validate SUSY is irresponsible

I am in the same boat as you, more precisely I was, especially after reading
guys like Jacques Ellul who had written against this particular project since
back in the '80s.

But then I started thinking that keeping that many smart and motivated people
busy working on stuff that will not be as societally disruptive as the work of
many past great scientists is not the worst thing in the world, so I
personally see those billions of euros as an acceptable opportunity cost that
gives us the chance not to be the direct contemporaries of a nuclear weapons
race like back in the '60s or the early '80s (because back then the "best" way
to keep those scientists busy was to ask them to build bigger nuclear bombs
and bigger rockets).

Incidentally I see the anti-competitive stance of the FAANG companies when it
comes to their employees in the same vein. Better for a very smart engineer to
spend his/her life doing menial work inside one of those companies than for
him/her to build the next AI startup which in the wrong hands will not be good
for society as a whole. And that type of technology always ends up in the
"wrong" hands.

~~~
e4325f
Spending tens of billions of dollars to keep scientists distracted so they
might not potentially work on damaging projects is beyond absurd. For a start,
I don't even think there's consensus that the Manhattan project wasn't
beneficial as a whole, given the relative peace we've had since the second
world war. What you said completely undermines a community that has
undoubtedly advanced society more than any other.

~~~
paganel
> that has undoubtedly advanced society more than any other.

From here [1]

> Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-
> warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched
> from the United States, followed by up to five more. Petrov judged the
> reports to be a false alarm,[1] and his decision to disobey orders, against
> Soviet military protocol,[2] is credited with having prevented an erroneous
> retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that
> could have resulted in a large-scale nuclear war.

There's a whole list of similar incidents (and I'm pretty sure not all of them
have been officially reported). Personally I care more about the feelings of
communities that don't bring us one button-push away from annihilating us as a
species.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov)

~~~
nix23
Ahh..your talking about politic not science, that's something completely
different.

------
blueblisters
> It could be a hard sell, especially as the new collider wouldn’t have as
> clear a goal as the LHC did. However, particle physics and the Standard
> Model are at a place where the application of science is needed to validate
> theories.

I mean I understand the need to keep pushing the boundaries of fundamental
physics, but how long do you justify such spending on a single project? That
same money could possibly be pumped into more immediately useful "hard"
applied problems like fusion reactors, clean energy, propulsion systems or
pretty much any problem on the technology horizon that won't be funded by
private capital.

~~~
dgellow
> That same money could possibly be pumped into more immediately useful "hard"
> applied problems like fusion reactors

Interesting, I just checked the number for ITER (i.e: Europe's main fusion
project), the project has been estimated at around €20-30 billion (with some
pessimistic estimates from the US at around €60 billion for the completion of
the reactor). And that's considered a VERY HIGH cost and has been the main
concern from participating countries. But somehow $23 billion for a new
collider have been approved?

Edit: correction, $23 billion haven't been approved, the plans for a potential
collider, estimated at $23 billion, have been approved.

~~~
usrusr
Think of CERN more as a cultural endeavor. It's the big, permanent,
multigenerational physicists jamboree. The big colliders are not the goal,
they are merely the foundation. The meat is in the detectors and experiments
that are attached and that would not be possible elsewhere. Sure, the flagship
experiments are also important in their own right, but their function as a
rallying point, as a halo product for everything else that is happening there
is a big reason why they should be funded.

A reactor project is a much less colorful affair, focused on a single
deliverable. More contractors, less postgrads. There should be money for both.

------
sschueller
Everyone complaining about funding of projects at CERN using a website running
in the www[1] which might not exist if it wasn't for CERN...

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web)

~~~
the_cramer
I think you need to distinguish between people complaining about CERN in
general and people complaining about funding a new large hadron collider. The
use of CERN and other scientific communities is well-known and, I think,
widely acknowledged.

------
crispyambulance
I'm surprised it got through. $23B is a lot of money, and it will cost A LOT
more when you start adding up the operational costs. In comparison, the space
shuttle was $1.5B per launch "amortized" over 135 launches.

One of the effects of the Space Shuttle is that it hogged the budget of NASA
(around 30%). Really worthwhile exploration and other space science programs
got less funding because the Shuttle program was so big in cost.

Is the FCC going to do the same for Physics? There's an opportunity cost here
that isn't getting addressed.

~~~
rubidium
This is CERN. They approved a study into building one.

They exist to study these things. Take away the toys and the institution has a
hard time justifying itself. This is mostly self preservation.

In my opinion we should give the Lhc a 25 year leash and then give the whole
super-high energy colliders thing a rest.

Put the funding into other research areas in physics; the reductionists have
had their turn :)

~~~
erk__
You should problably note that this collider is first planned to begin
building around 30 years after the LHC was in put into operation. And it will
probably take longer to build as well so put around 10 more years on that and
you have 40 years after the LHC was put into operation.

~~~
foxyv
So $23 billion over 40 years that would make it about 50 million a year. Just
a few million more than what the US military spends on viagra.

~~~
gumbo
You mean ~500 million.

~~~
foxyv
Woops! 500 million is correct. Thank you!

------
f00zz
Honest question, what are some engineering spin-offs that could come out of
this? I'm asking because I'm reminded of a Peter Thiel interview where it's
mentioned that, despite changing our view of the universe, no "real world"
applications came out of the quark model discovered in the 1960s.

This is different from a project like ITER, which is also hugely expensive but
could be a game changer.

~~~
cosmic_quanta
Here's a concrete example. Some of CERN detector technology has been spun-off
as Quantum Detectors
[[https://quantumdetectors.com/](https://quantumdetectors.com/)], which makes
detectors for electron microscopy, x-ray scattering , and neutron detection I
think.

I've personally beta-tested their MerlinEM and it's pretty damn cool. It's
very different from other technologies that already exist (e.g. Gatan
detectors). You can read out images at extremely fast rates (compared to
traditional electron microscopy detectors anyway). I'm guessing that this
comes from the need for CERN to read-out detectors fully for every collision.
Who would have known that this would have been useful for unrelated ultrafast
electron scattering experiments?

~~~
BurnGpuBurn
Understandably if you build a 15B$ machine, your engineers will come up with
some clever stuff. The tech you mention is likewise tech that was developed to
build the detector. I think he means to ask about actual physics we learned
doing LHC experiments, that actually have a tangible real world application.

------
kashyapc
I'd guess Prof. Sabine Hossenfelder (herself a physicist, and a Research
Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies) must be pretty
annoyed, to put it politely. She posits that a lot of current physicists are
working with outdated notions of "beauty":

(quote)

 _But if it’s clear that putting forward new hypotheses just because they are
beautiful doesn’t mean they’re likely to be right, then why do theorists in
these fields focus so much on beauty? Worse, why do they continue to focus on
the same type of beauty, even though that method has demonstrably not worked
for 40 years?_

 _... So I have historical evidence, math, and data. In my book I lay out
these points and tell the reader what conclusion I have drawn: Beauty is not a
good guide to theory-development._

 _I then explain that this widespread use of scientifically questionable but
productive methodology is symptomatic to the current organization of academic
research, and a problem that’s not confined to physics._

(/quote)

\---

I'd also recommend listening to the EconTalk podcast[2] where Hossenfelder was
a guest.

\---

PS: I'm not judging this decision of funding, not least because I'm no where
near qualified :-). I like what CERN does in general (and I sometimes interact
with one of their Cloud Infrastructure teams.)

[1] [http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/10/you-say-
theoretical...](http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/10/you-say-theoretical-
physicists-are.html)

[2] [https://www.econtalk.org/sabine-hossenfelder-on-physics-
real...](https://www.econtalk.org/sabine-hossenfelder-on-physics-reality-and-
lost-in-math/)

~~~
davrosthedalek
Oh come on, every second sentence she writes outside of a book mentions her
books. Do you really have to quote /that/ part.

I am a Prof. for Nuclear Physics, so maybe HEP-adjacent and biased. I don't
think I will ever get much use of LHC/FCC myself (EIC will do that for the
stuff I'm doing), but I'm happy if they will build it. It's a fallacy to
believe that this money takes away from other research. There would be enough
money to do all possible research if one really wants to. Just a point to
consider: A lot of money for the military is essential to prop up the economy.
The same, maybe more effectively, is true for research, with the added benefit
that you educate people, and maybe find some cool new stuff.

~~~
kashyapc
Sorry, I didn't meant to quote "that" part (by that I take it that you're
referring to the "beautiful theory" aspect — _edit: I think you were referring
to the mention about her book_ ) to provoke. I just wanted to briefly mention
Hossenfelder's position as I haven't seen it mentioned when I saw the thread.

And yeah, this might be a "piddling" amount compared to the military spending.

On the whole, we're in agreement; as the 'PS' in my first comment hints, I'm
of course all for anything that instills scientific curiosity in the broader
public, while discovering new stuff or carefully sussing out bogus hypotheses.

~~~
davrosthedalek
No offense taken! If anything, I'm annoyed by her, not by you quoting her.

I meant the "in my book" part. But thinking about it, it's important to give
the context: she is trying to sell a book, and why I don't want to speculate
whether it's her primary motivation, it is /one/ motivation, otherwise she
wouldn't mention it all the time.

------
take_a_breath
HN: Governments don’t fund enough scientific research projects.

Also HN: Governments shouldn’t be funding this scientific research project.

Can’t win with this crowd.

~~~
Torok
I mean it's obviously all about funding the right projects isn't it? Going to
an obviously hyperbolic extreme for the sake of the argument, say that the EU
invested billions in determining if the moon is really made of cheese then
that's obviously a waste of money even if it is a scientific investment.

There's a non negligible amount of people, even those who have worked at CERN
previously, saying that it just doesn't make sense to put more investment into
a new supercollider which might just show that there's an energy desert of
particles in the regime it's testing.

You're also falling prey to the fallacy that HN acts as a single entity, in
reality everyone here has different opinions and can't just be all lumped in
one bucket saying HN thinks this or that. It's obviously going to seem
contradictory if you view it as if it's a single person

~~~
take_a_breath
==I mean it's obviously all about funding the right projects isn't it?==

So is everything in life, but that doesn't help us actually determine which
are the "right projects".

==Going to an obviously hyperbolic extreme for the sake of the argument, say
that the EU invested billions in determining if the moon is really made of
cheese then that's obviously a waste of money even if it is a scientific
investment.==

That you have to go to such a ridiculous argument seems to say something about
your stance. What would we learn if we discovered the moon was made of cheese?
Why would it matter? What is the scientific impact of a cheese moon? Without
those answers it isn't really a scientific investment.

==There's a non negligible amount of people, even those who have worked at
CERN previously, saying that it just doesn't make sense to put more investment
into a new supercollider which might just show that there's an energy desert
of particles in the regime it's testing.==

And a non-negligible amount of people, even those who currently work at CERN,
think it is worthwhile. We could play this game all day (which is my entire
point). If the test fails, we still get to learn something new. A foundation
of the scientific method.

==You're also falling prey to the fallacy that HN acts as a single entity, in
reality everyone here has different opinions and can't just be all lumped in
one bucket saying HN thinks this or that. It's obviously going to seem
contradictory if you view it as if it's a single person==

You seem to be falling prey to the fallacy that all people who worked at CERN
act as a single entity. In reality, people who have worked at CERN have
different opinions. Similarly, I've seen many posts about how HN is a hive
mind. I guess that is just when it suits the narrative.

------
shmageggy
Alternative link that doesn't have a redirect to an advertising.com address or
forced tracking cookie acceptance

[https://phys.org/news/2020-06-cern-council-endorses-
larger-s...](https://phys.org/news/2020-06-cern-council-endorses-larger-
supercollider.html)

------
auntienomen
More precisely, CERN approves spending a few million to consider more detailed
plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider.

------
fnord77
$2 billion was sunk into this 40 TeV collider before it was cancelled

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider)

~~~
mathattack
Canceled in part because of our $255 billion budget deficit, a number that
seems quaint today.

------
mromanuk
It's truly awkward that engadget uses 62-mile, when it should use the 100km
unit.

~~~
mrlala
It's even more amazing that you take the time to comment about this.. why do
you care so much about the unit specified?

------
mqus
most of the comments are about the cost-to-deliverable tradeoff, which is
pretty high. But we have to consider that the new particle accellerator is not
the only thing that will be created. An enormous amount of infrastructure will
have to be developed and researched, including new hardware to handle all the
events, new detector hardware, magnets, etc. All of these are pretty usable
outside of a particle detector or even science environments, because many of
the hard parts are engineering problems. I think the "useless" part of this
23B investment is far smaller than we think.

For evidence of that look at the past, two projects that immediately come to
my mind as being pushed by CERN: HTTP and KiCad. But there are surely some
more.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _we have to consider that the new particle accellerator is not the only
> thing that will be created_

The problem with this argument is it works for any spending.

The cost of $23bn on a new collider is potentially _not_ spending $23bn on
other, more fruitful, physics experiments.

------
LatteLazy
This article and the title (and subject) seems invite uninformed speculation.
Some people who are pro-particle-research will point out that you never know
what is there till you look. Others will point out CERN has not achieved much
with the LHC yet and that this research is highly speculative.

I have 2 questions:

Can anyone make a good case why this is necessary? The only experiment listed
is Higgs Dark matter work. But that seems speculative and also is already
being done at ATLAS.

If this is not speculative, is it still a good use of money compared to
spending the same cash on (say) genetics or AI or nano materials, all of which
seem to be areas both in need of funding and with high potential for break
throughs?

~~~
vidarh
This isn't starting tomorrow. This is going to take 2-3 decades, starting with
a design study.

So part of the point here is future-proofing. Upgrades to LHC are due to take
place. We don't know what the outcome of experiments after those upgrades will
be. We don't know where other research will get us to over the next decade or
two.

If we want a new collider in place _3 decades from now_ then it is time to
start planning, so that if we find out a decade from now it is essential for
future progress we've got a decade less to wait.

It's not a given this will be built - we have at least decade and a half to
decide whether to put down the full amount. But that is not a justification
for not spending a tiny fraction of the cost to take the project forward.

~~~
LatteLazy
I take you're point, but this is all still entirely speculative as far as I
can tell. Do we need it now? No but we might in 30 years! Or we might not. And
there is no good reason to think we will.

Particle physics has felt very tapped out for a while. And we still have the
LHC and LHC upgrades to answer the few questions left Remember.

~~~
vidarh
It may be entirely speculative (I don't know), but that is CERNs leaderships
_job_ \- if they don't plan ahead and spend small amounts on design studies
_now_ and it turns out new hardware is needed, and they need to start a
project from scratch ten years down the line, then that's potentially 10k+
people (CERN currently has 2.5k on staff, of which a lot are not scientists,
and ~12k external "users") having their experiments delayed for 10 years. Of
course not all experiments would be affected.

CERNs yearly normal budget is ~$1.2bn. Spending a few million on design
studies and planning now is a pittance as risk mitigation against delaying
future experiments.

Once there's a need to commit serious cash, then these questions needs to be
answered.

~~~
LatteLazy
Sorry, I misunderstood your previous comment. I'm totally fine with them
designing it and making the case for it. Actually having a good justification
is a long way off imho. But a few mil for feasibility and a few more to work
out what it could do is a smart exercise.

------
codegladiator
I guess this might be a stupid question, but how does the size of the circle
matter ? I mean, the particles are going in a round, wouldn't that be like
infinite from the particles prespective, so is it related to the turn rate or
something ?

~~~
vihren
It is more related to the needed strength of the magnets to keep the particles
on track and also the synchrotron radiation. The first issue is that the lower
the radius of the circle, the stronger magnetic field is needed because of the
increased centrifugal forces. The second issue is that synchrotron radiation
leads to loss of energy. It is again proportional to the acceleration
perpendicular to the vector of the velocity of the particle [0].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrotron_radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrotron_radiation)

------
l0b0
Aside from the gamble that any fundamental research represents, consider the
immense amount of training CERN generates every year, with several thousand
physicists and engineers continuously involved. That sort of a mix generates
more learning than the sum of its parts, because everyone has opportunities to
learn from many related fields. If the money was instead split into many
smaller projects it wouldn't generate the same _kind_ of learning, because
each project would be a tiny silo compared to CERN.

------
oh_sigh
> The aim is to start construction of the new tunnel by 2038

Why wait so long? Surely the tunnel is the easiest part of the project, and
the Swiss are very good at digging tunnels. The article goes on to talk about
funding issues, but I'd imagine they'd be able to start digging the tunnel now
and round up funding over the years by expanding their organization or
lobbying the EU harder.

------
amai
This is simply the reaction of CERN to the competition from China, which is
planning to build an 80km collider:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_Electron_Positron_Col...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_Electron_Positron_Collider)

------
viswanathk
> The aim is to start construction of the new tunnel by 2038

Not in my lifetime, I guess.

~~~
The_rationalist
Did you know that though vitrification, state of the art cryogenics researched
have achieved to preserve 100% of the structure of a pig brain? The science
for preserving with 100% accuracy your brain is already here. Those scientists
use this technology to preserve organs and the cryogenic property is just a
side effect. We simply need an enterprise that reproduce their results on
human brains (shouldn't be different than a pig brain) and that commercialize
it.

The process replace blood and other brain fluids with a chemically toxic
fluid. Which means that while the structure is preserved, any attempt at
resurrecting the brain would need an advanced technique that would gradually
replace the toxic fluid with fresh blood/Cerebrospinal fluid and the
replacement should be 1) total 2) the replacement process should not destroy
structure. Intermediary new kinds of fluids in the process might make the
transition easier/safer. Once your brain is filled with the right amount of
blood and of cerebrospinal fluid and has no toxic fluid left in order for the
brain to function, a minimal level of hormones / molecules will need to be
dispatched in the brain.

Once all of this is achieved remains the problem of interfacing your brain
with a new body.

Happily once cryogenized (technically doable today) resolving all the others
necessary steps will take time and you will have time. With not so much money
you could be kept vitrified (not frozen) for a millennium or two. It seems
unlikely but still is a possibility that an advanced civilization could not by
design uncryogenize you without affecting your structure. But the structure
being preserved they could make a copy of you (numeric or not), while this has
its lot of metaphysical issues It's still a path far more hopeful than eternal
death. As a reminder our normal life is mostly as metaphysically weird as most
of our cells are replaced every 5 years? What's define YOU is totally unclear
and continuous

~~~
SuoDuanDao
Have they been able to wake the pigs back up yet?

------
dang
Also discussed 4 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23577124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23577124)

------
mrfusion
Has anyone considered a collider in space? It seems like you could have huge
distances. And just let the particles fly in the vacuum between acceleration
points?

~~~
davrosthedalek
If you want to store the beam, you need a ring. And the size of the ring is
given by the minimum bending radius, which is given by maximum field strength
you can achieve, and energy loss from bremsstrahlung in the bends, which you
have to put back.

So space doesn't really help: You'll still need a circle of magnets.
Approximating the circle with a polygon means you split up a smaller circle
with straight segments. But these straight segments are not really useful.

~~~
mrfusion
That’s sad. I really thought space could open up some new physics.

~~~
davrosthedalek
Certainly can, see AMS :)

~~~
mrfusion
What’s that?

~~~
davrosthedalek
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer:
[https://home.cern/science/experiments/ams](https://home.cern/science/experiments/ams)
[https://ams.nasa.gov/](https://ams.nasa.gov/)

It's essentially a HEP-style(ish) particle detector, mounted on the ISS, to
study cosmic rays.

------
booleandilemma
Non-scientist here - do existing colliders like the LHC become useless, or can
they still be used to make new scientific discoveries?

~~~
maxnoe
No, as you can see in the drawings, the old accelarators are always integrated
as pre-accelerators into the chain, feeding the next larger ones.

LHC will feed this new accelerator, this is why they intersect at two points.

------
ngcc_hk
I heard a top phycists are going to china as they are building the next
generation there. Is this a strategy to stop that.

~~~
dukwon
It's more like hedging their bets. The Chinese proposals (CEPC + SppC) are
simultaneously underwhelming in terms of performance specs and over-ambitious
in terms of timescale. There's also always a chance that they will never
materialise. If they do actually get built, construction of the FCC will be
cancelled and CERN will participate in (and hopefully improve) CEPC+SppC.
Similarly if Japan builds the ILC, FCC-ee will be cancelled and CERN will join
that while bringing forward the FCC-hh.

------
GordonS
Is someone able to ELI5 what the previous LHC actually achieved? (not a loaded
question, I genuinely don't know)

~~~
cygx
The big one was the discovery of the Higgs boson, a missing piece of the so-
called 'standard model' of particle physics, plus a bunch of other stuff (lack
of evidence for super-symmetry so far, discovery of some tetra- and
pentaquarks states, potentially some hints of physics beyond the standard
model from B-meson decays, ...).

In large part, it 'merely' confirmed our current theories, disappointing
people hoping for revolutionary discoveries.

~~~
davrosthedalek
That's the headliner so far, but LHC has produced an enormous amount of data.
There are also some quite interesting findings for example from LHCb:
Tetraquarks:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.11952](https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.11952) Lepton
flavor violation:
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.07287.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.07287.pdf)

~~~
dukwon
LHCb has not seen lepton flavour violation, and neither has anyone else
outside of neutrino oscillations.

LHCb, Belle and BaBar have however seen hints of lepton flavour non-
universality.

~~~
davrosthedalek
You are right, I miss-typed, I had non-universality in mind.

------
turowicz
I see plenty of critical theory majors complaining about STEM in this thread.
What has the world come to.

------
LatteLazy
Can anyone comment on the claim that making large numbers of Higgs' bosons
will explain dark matter?

~~~
T-A
It's a plausible idea, but there are no guarantees. The reasoning goes like
this:

So far, the Standard Model is holding up quite well (too well in fact; it
would be nice to have some glaring discrepancies pointing to new physics).
According to the Standard Model, all fundamental particles with mass get that
mass by interacting with the Higgs field. Now, assuming that dark matter also
consists of particles with mass (plausible), it's a fair guess that those
particles also get their mass by interacting with the Higgs field. And if they
do, we should be able to produce them by making Higgs particles (excitations
of the Higgs field); when those decay, they will produce pairs of any particle
species which they interact with (provided that those particle pairs are less
massive than the Higgs particle; and even if they are not, their existence
should indirectly affect Higgs decay to other particle species in ways which
may be possible to study).

An obvious way this idea could fail is that dark matter gets its mass from a
different Higgs field than the Standard Model one (SUSY generally requires
more than one Higgs field, and GUTs can have lots). Another is that dark
matter is not just another particle but something more weird.

------
instance
Super exciting! For reference, current Large Hadron Collider is 17 miles (27
km).

------
anthony_barker
Why not in km?

Why do miles even come into eu science projects?

~~~
mellosouls
It's an American report. Dollars as well are used for currency. Natural in the
title.

The km etc. are expressed in the report.

