International Linear Collider Design Ready To Go

Via El Reg comes news that the International Linear Collider's Technical Design Report is finished, leaving only funding in the way of construction. From the article: "A five volume report containing the plans for the International Linear Collider has been handed over to the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) for approval. The Technical Design Report contains costings for the project, along with the design of the new collider. The new machine is significantly more powerful than the hoary European Large Hadron Collider and is likely to be sited in Japan, because the Pacific island nation has reportedly offered to pay for half of the construction costs. ... Jonathan Bagger, chair of the International Linear Collider Steering Committee, said the particle collider was 'ready to go.' 'The publication of the Technical Design Report represents a major accomplishment,' he continued. ... The ILC consists of two linear accelerators facing each other. " A few years late, but hopefully not never.

Re:In Japan?!

[paiute]

Those are all good reasons, but they will build it in your backyard behind the shed if you pay half of the cost.

Re:Not more powerful than LHC

[Warbothong]

The collision energies are ~10 % of LHC's. The benefit of a linear collider is that leptons like electrons and positrons can be used, making the analysis of the collisions simpler.

The LHC's predecessor was the "Large Electron Positron" collider, so that's not a particular reason to use a linear accelerator.

Lepton accelerators do have an advantage over baryon colliders in that leptons are (as far as we can tell) indivisible; if you smash two leptons together with X amount of energy each, you get a collision of energy 2X. With baryons, the energy of each is mostly divided up between their three constituent quarks. Colliding two baryons usually results in a collision between one quark from each, so your collisions only use about 1/3 of the energy that was put in.

Re:In Japan?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen coworkers eventually bail from academia for greener pastures in terms of money, whether because they got tired of that particular ladder, or tired of the politics, or a change in priorities related to money. A few went into finance, some making a huge amount of money, and some not so much. But a lot of it was much more boring than that, and were able to go into industry jobs, sometimes only vaguely related to their research experience, and get free training and starting pay at least twice what they were paid in academia. The biggest complaint from those that leave that I've kept in touch with is that it is really boring. If money becomes a top priority, there are plenty of places to bail from academia to, at least in the sciences and engineering fields.