---
title: "Physicist: Maybe We Don’t Need an Expensive New Collider"
description: "Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder argues that scientists need to justify the billions of dollars their experiments cost, like on a new collider"
date: "2019-07-23"
modified: "2019-07-23"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/physicist-dont-need-expensive-collider"
categories:
  - "Physics"
  - "Science & Energy"
tags:
  - "particle collider"
  - "physics"
  - "the digest"
---

# Physicist: Maybe We Don’t Need an Expensive New Collider

![Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder argues that scientists should be expected to better justify all of the billions of dollars their experiments cost.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/physicist-dont-need-expensive-collider.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: CERN/Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

## On Second Thought

The argument for building the Future Circular Collider, the massive particle collider planned for construction at CERN, is based more on selling a sense of wonder than on concrete benefits to physicists.

At least, that's [according to an op-ed](<https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/which-should-come-first-in-physics-theory-or-experiment-glad-you-asked/>) that Sabine Hossenfelder, a prominent theoretical physicist at Germany's Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, published in *Scientific American* on Tuesday. In it, Hossenfelder argues that the physicists who advocate for bigger and better particle accelerators, colliders, and other major investments ought to be held to a [higher standard](<https://futurism.com/holometer-finds-no-evidence-support-holographic-principle-scientists-expected>) than they are today.

## Justifying Costs

The proposed Future Circular Collider is several times longer than the Large Hadron Collider and [10 times more powerful](<https://futurism.com/particle-accelerator-future-circular-collider>), improvements that physicists argue could help them find dark matter or unravel fundamental mysteries of the universe.

The new collider would also cost anywhere from $10.2 to $23.8 billion, *[Nature News ](<https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00173-2>)*[reported](<https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00173-2>) in January. That, Hossenfelder argues, is far too steep a cost to justify based on dubious claims about possible discoveries that have circulated since the Large Hadron Collider's inception.

"Rather than being a long-awaited triumph, the LHC has demonstrated that particle physicists' arguments that their colliders would help answer the big questions were wrong," Hossenfelder writes in *SciAm*. "Consequently, now such physicists do not have plausible arguments for why a bigger collider should make a fundamentally new discovery."

**READ MORE:** [Which Should Come First in Physics: Theory or Experiment? Glad You Asked](<https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/which-should-come-first-in-physics-theory-or-experiment-glad-you-asked/>) \[*Scientific American*\]

**More on the FCC:** *[Vast New Particle Accelerator Would Dwarf Large Hadron Collider](<https://futurism.com/particle-accelerator-future-circular-collider>)*

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)