China’s supercollider could ‘rip the fabric’ of the universe

The east Asian nation is building a particle accelerator which will be seven times as powerful as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland. With a circumference of 34 miles, it will

also be twice as long as the LHC. When CERN began work on the LHC, many feared it could end the universe or create black holes on Earth. Now with China’s plans to build a more powerful

particle accelerator, the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC), the fears have inevitably rose again. Space website the Daily Galaxy paraphrased astrophysicist Martin Rees and wrote

“there’s a chance the colliders could cause a ‘catastrophe that engulfs space itself’.” Mr Rees warned “innovation is often hazardous,” but that “physicists should be circumspect about

carrying out experiments that generate conditions with no precedent, even in the cosmos.” Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Emergency Physics at the academy, confirmed the

CEPC’s power. He said: “LHC is hitting its limits of energy level. “It seems not possible to escalate the energy dramatically ay the existing facility. “The technical route we chose is

different from the LHC. “While the LHC smashes together protons, it generates Higgs particles together with many other particles.” Mr Yifang told China Daily the CEPC, which is set to be

built near the start of the Great Wall, creates a “clean environment that only produces Higgs boson particles. “This is a machine for the world and by the world: not a Chinese one”. Work on

the CEPC is set to start before 2021, with the hopes of having it up and running by 2055. The Daily Galaxy wrote: “China’s Massive Particle Accelerator could create a phase transition that

rips the very fabric of spacetime”.