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Ling Xin

The quest to understand the “God particle” may have just hit a wall in China.
An ambitious multibillion-dollar plan to build the world’s largest particle collider – a machine that could have placed the country at the pinnacle of global basic research and scientific talent – may be abandoned, according to its lead scientist.
The Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC), designed to smash electrons and their antimatter counterparts to study Higgs bosons with unprecedented precision, was not put forward for government consideration in China’s next five-year plan, according to Wang Yifang, of the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing.
“Although our proposal that CEPC be included in the next five-year plan was not successful, the institute will continue this effort, which an international collaboration has developed for the past 10 years,” Wang told CERN Courier, a magazine published by European particle physics lab CERN, last month.
Wang said his team planned to submit the proposal again in 2030 unless CERN’s similar project – the Future Circular Collider (FCC) – received official approval before then. In that case, he said, Chinese physicists would seek to join the FCC effort and abandon the CEPC.
Proposed in 2012, soon after the discovery of the Higgs boson, the CEPC has been the focus of fierce debate in China. Supporters, including mathematician Shing-Tung Yau, have argued that the collider would attract thousands of leading scientists from around the world and drive technological innovation far beyond particle physics.
But Nobel laureate Chen-ning Yang repeatedly voiced opposition, arguing that China should not rush into building such an expensive machine. Yang, who died in October, questioned whether the collider’s scientific pay-off could justify its enormous cost and warned that it could become a “bottomless pit” for national resources.
During a public talk in Beijing in 2019, the then 97-year-old Yang told the audience that the golden age of particle colliders had long passed. “The party is over,” he said. “Other countries can’t afford it, and people say China has money … I’m glad the Chinese government didn’t fall for it.”
Both the CEPC and Europe’s FCC have been envisioned as next-generation “Higgs factories”, aimed at probing the fundamental particle that gave matter its mass after the Big Bang.


The CEPC was designed with a circumference of 100km (62 miles), slightly larger than the FCC’s ring at 91km. Its estimated cost was 36.4 billion yuan (US$5.1 billion), roughly one-third of the European project’s projected €16 billion (US$18.4 billion) budget.
In terms of technical progress, the CEPC was ahead of its European counterpart. Wang said the collider was now “mature” with key design milestones already completed, including a conceptual design report in 2018 and technical design reports finished in October.
Slides presented in January by Lou Xinchou, a senior member of the CEPC collaboration, showed that the project had involved thousands of scientists from nearly 160 institutes in 39 countries. Candidate sites included Qinhuangdao, Huzhou and Changsha, with construction expected to take about eight years.
The CEPC received the highest scores in an internal evaluation organised by the high-energy physics community, ranking it above other major proposals such as the PandaX underground dark matter experiment in Sichuan province, the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (Juno), and the Super Tau-Charm Facility in Hefei, the slides showed.
According to CERN Courier, while the CEPC is out, the Super Tau-Charm Facility has since been shortlisted for further consideration in China’s next five-year plan.
Wang said his team would start compiling the CEPC’s engineering design report and aim to release it by 2027.
A feasibility study for the FCC was released in March and its member states are expected to respond by around 2028 on whether to move forward with the project. If approved, construction could begin in the 2030s.


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Science

Is China’s ‘God particle’ quest over? World’s largest collider project may be dropped

The Circular Electron-Positron Collider (CEPC), a project designed to smash electrons and their antimatter counterparts to study Higgs bosons with unprecedented precision, was not put forward for government consideration in China’s next five-year plan, according to lead scientist Wang Yifang. Photo: Shutterstock Images

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

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

Chinese scientist and Nobel laureate Yang Chen-ning has said the money needed to build the proposed collider would be a “bottomless pit”. Photo: VCG via Getty Images

Peter Higgs, who proposed existence of the ‘God particle’, dead at 94

Professor Peter Higgs in front of a photo of the Large Hadron Collider. File photo: TNS

The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. File photo: AP

Peter Higgs in 2013. File photo: AFP

European leadership in particle physics threatened by China, CERN chief says

CERN Director General Fabiola Gianotti discusses the Future Particle Collider (FCC) in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland on Monday. Photo: AFP

The tunnels of CERN’s Future Circular Collider (FCC) and the current Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) / AFP

A sculpture next to the Globe of Science and Innovation, the headquarters of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin near Geneva, Switzerland. Photo: AFP

The CERN logo at the headquarters in Meyrin near Geneva, Switzerland. Photo: AFP

Maths guru Shing-Tung Yau on what China needs for global leadership in science

Illustration: Henry Wong

Shing-Tung Yau retired from Harvard University in 2022 and thereafter joined Tsinghua University. Photo: Edmond So

A section of the campus of US technology giant Google in Mountain View, California. Photo: AFP

A view of the Charles K. Kao Auditorium in Hong Kong Science Park, named after the Nobel laureate. Photo: Jelly Tse

Anti-government protesters at Hong Kong Polytechnic University in November 2019. Shing-Tung Yau says the turmoil disrupted education in Hong Kong. Photo: Winson Wong

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How did Chen-ning Yang miss out on a second Nobel Prize in physics?

Illustration: Lau Ka-kuen

Celebrated physicist Chen-ning Yang, the first Chinese Nobel laureate, spent 50 years in the US but eventually returned to China and continued to train and inspire young scientists while aged in his 90s. Photo: Getty Images

Nobel Prize-winning physicists Tsung-dao Lee (left) and Chen-ning Yang, who both studied with Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi, creator of the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor. Photo: Handout

Chen-ning Yang is awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1957 for his significant contribution to elementary particle physics through his theory of parity non-conservation. Photo: Handout

Polish-born French physicist Marie Curie, famous for her work on radioactivity and pictured in 1911, was the only person to win Nobel Prizes twice, in two different scientific fields. 

A statue of Chen-ning Yang stands surrounded by flowers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where Yang’s life was commemorated. Photo: Holly Chik

Jackson Yim Chi-lung, owner of Pak Hop Photo Studio in Wo Che Plaza at Sha Tin, with a photograph and painting of the late Nobel Prize winner Chen-ning Yang based on a photo taken by Jackson’s father, Franklin. Photo: SCMP

Chen-ning Yang was remembered for his many achievements in the field of physics during a commemoration in CUHK last month. Photo: SCMP

News

China

Multibillion-dollar research proposal to study Higgs bosons did not make the shortlist for the nation’s next five-year plan, lead scientist says


Multibillion-dollar research proposal to study Higgs bosons did not make the shortlist for the nation’s next five-year plan, lead scientist says.


Chen-ning Yang

Shing-Tung Yau

Is China’s ‘God particle’ quest over? World’s largest collider project may be dropped

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Multibillion-dollar research proposal to study Higgs bosons did not make the shortlist for the nation’s next five-year plan, lead scientist says

Multibillion-dollar research proposal to study Higgs bosons did not make the shortlist for the nation’s next five-year plan, lead scientist says