CERN’s $17-billion supercollider in question as top funder criticizes cost Germany has raised doubts about the affordability of the Large Hadron Collider’s planned successor. By Davide Castelvecchi

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01671-8?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=a660278c77-nature-briefing-daily-20240610&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b27a691814-a660278c77-50432164 Funding worries for ‘Higgs boson factory’ Plans for a US$17 billion European particle accelerator are facing a serious challenge after the German government said that the project was unaffordable. The Future Circular Collider (FCC) would be more than three times larger than the Large Hadron Collider and would focus on mass-producing the mysterious Higgs boson. The financing plan for the FCC “is extremely vague and requires a high level of commitment from external partners, which is neither assured nor even in prospect at the present time,” said a spokesperson for the country’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The questions and concerns raised “are not new to us and they are all being addressed in the FCC feasibility study,” says CERN’s research director Joachim Mnich.