Big Bang investigators want new atom smasher

PARIS (AP) - Scientists behind the European particle collider aimed at uncovering the secrets of the universe pushed Monday to build an even bigger machine _ with money and partners from around the world.

Instead of whirling atoms in giant rings, as existing colliders in Switzerland and the United States do, scientists want a new-generation machine that will shoot them straight.

Depending on who wants to host it _ and how much they are willing to pay _ the next-generation collider could potentially be built anywhere in the world. Japan, Russia, the U.S. and Switzerland are all potential hosts, although scientists from China, India, Canada and elsewhere also will be associated with it, said Barry Barish, director of one of the proposed new collider projects.

Scientists gathered in Paris on Monday were encouraged by the results of the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider run by CERN, a particle physics laboratory outside Geneva. A smaller collider called Tevatron is run by Fermilab near Chicago. Both are highly complex machines that took years to bring to fruition.

Rolf Heuer, head of CERN, said at a press conference in Paris that he is “pretty happy” about what scientists have so far discovered from the LHC about how the universe was created.

The machine is “opening a new era of research.”

But he said there will be a need for a new linear collider. It is the “interplay and combination of results” between the two different types of atom smashers that allows high-energy physics to advance, he said.

More than 1,000 physicists have gathered in Paris to hear the latest results of the LHC _ and the preparations for its successor _ at the International Conference on High Energy Physics, which runs through July 28.

The experiments are more about shaping our understanding of how the universe was created than immediate improvements to technology in our daily lives.

Scientists are attempting to simulate the moments after the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago, which they theorize was the creation of the universe.

Plans for the next step include a euro10 billion ($12.85 billion), 50-kilometer (31-mile) tunnel called the International Linear Collider, and the Compact Linear Collider, or CLIC, which has not yet been priced.

“Both are now really international cooperations, collaborations,” said Heuer.

He said plans for the ILC, which first originated in a Hamburg laboratory, is more technologically advanced, but CLIC, which started at CERN, aims at higher-energy experiments.

The choice will be determined by the discoveries of the LHC, he said.

Barish, director of the proposed ILC, told The Associated Press that scientists could have the technology ready to go ahead with his project in 2012.

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