Construction of the world’s largest particle collider could begin in China in the next three years. Dubbed Circular Electron Positron Collider , the project could cost 36 billion yuan and ten years to make, a South China Morning Post report said. Government approval for the project is, however, pending.
These experiments at CEPC are expected to create millions of Higgs bosons, also earning the project the moniker Higgs factory. Last December, the project released its “technical design report,” compiled over five years. This involved the work of over 1,000 scientists from 24 countries and also passed an international review.
The project has also received negative feedback from Nobel Prize winner Chen Ning Yang. In 2016, scientists publicly questioned the need to build a collider in China when facing other challenges, such as economic development and environmental protection. Wang Yifang, the director of the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing, who originally proposed the CEPC project, believes that the cost is not too much since it will support the work of thousands of scientists over multiple decades in China.