Redefining reality: Chinese accelerator prepares scientific breakthrough
618 million dollars and one task – to understand what the universe is made of.
Chinese scientists plan to build a new particle collider for testing the Standard Model of particle physics in great detail. It is reported that key technologies for the construction of the Super Tau-Charm Facility (STCF) worth 4.5 billion yuan (about 618 million US dollars) are already being developed, and construction will begin in three years.
When the STCF becomes operational, the collider will produce a huge amount of subatomic particles such as tau leptons and charm quarks. This will help to better understand how these particles combine to form larger structures of matter. “STCF will allow China to lead the world in research on tau charm physics and related technologies for decades to come,” said Zhao Renguo, chief scientist of the project, from the University of Science and Technology of China.
The collider will also answer cutting-edge scientific questions, such as the nature of the strong force and why the universe is dominated by matter rather than antimatter, Zhao said. Like the Beijing Electron-Positron Collider (BEPC), which has been in operation since 1990, the STCF will work by accelerating electrons and their antiparticles, positrons, to close to the speed of light, and then slamming them together to generate various subatomic particles.
Trajectories, energies and electric charges of subatomic particles will be recorded using the so-called spectrometer to reconstruct the reaction processes. Note that the BEPC over the years of its existence has allowed scientists from all over the world to make important discoveries, including the first accurate measurement of the mass of tau in the 1990s.
However, compared to BEPC, the new accelerator will be twice as large in size. It has two rings for storing electrons and positrons, each about 800 meters long, and a linear accelerator 400 meters long.
In addition, STCF will increase the collision rate by up to 100 times, which will collect as much data in three days as BEPC collects in a year. This will open up new horizons for the study of physics, including possible discoveries beyond the Standard Model.
It is expected that the key technologies for STCF will be developed by the end of 2025, and the accelerator itself will be built during the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030). Hefei (Anhui Province), Shaoxing (Zhejiang Province) and Zhengzhou (Henan Province) are considered as possible locations for the new facility.
The project team has already received 420 million yuan from local governments to develop key technologies. The final decision on the construction of the STCF is to be made by the National Development and Reform Commission of China.
The project may face competition from another ambitious proposal, the Ring Electron-Positron Collider, which is also planned to be built in China.
