Hacker News Reader

Is there any particular reason why they keep building colliders with ever increasing diamaters, instead of going vertical? If we can create magnetic fields strong & precise enough to force particles into a very large loop, surely we can bend the loop upwards ever so slightly and gain additional distance by coiling the collider like a spring?

Seems like an insane amount of tunnels is always needed for these things, which is obviously expensive and labour intensive.

View on HN

The point is minimizing curvature, not maximizing length. Curved path makes the accelerated particles lose energy through radiation.

Interesting, thanks fot clearing that up. I was under the impression that the length was where it's at.

For scale: The LHC has more than 11km diameter and the deepest mine we have built is 4km. Adding vertical distance is much harder than making the diameter of the circular tunnel larger.

I worded that poorly, I didn't mean to say that the entire distance should be covered vertically, but rather that a second loop could be wound on top of the first.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com