China Plans World's Largest Particle Collider to Unlock Universe's Mysteries

(Beijing) – China plans to invest US$ 6 billion to build the world's largest particle collider to get a foot in the door of experimental physics dominated by European and American research labs, but some scientists warn it could be a wasteful undertaking.

The blueprint for what scientists call a super collider, an underground facility to smash subatomic particles at high speeds, was drafted in 2014 by scientists at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) in Beijing. The project, dubbed the "Higgs Factory," aims to build a facility capable of generating millions of Higgs boson particles, which physicists say form the building blocks of the universe.