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The FCC is much larger than the current large hadron collider. Europe's CERN laboratory said on Monday a detailed analysis revealed no technical obstacles to building the world's biggest particle collider, even as critics took issue with the "pharaonic" $17-billion project. 'The Future Circular Collider (FCC) project is essential for ensuring that Europe maintains its global leadership in fundamental physics, CERN chief Fabiola Gianotti told AFP.

"There is real competition" from China in particular, she cautioned, hailing that the giant FCC "project is absolutely on the good track" and urging states to release the funding needed to move forward. After analyzing around 100 different scenarios, CERN on Monday published results of a years-long feasibility study for its preferred option: a nearly 91-kilometer (56-mile) circular tunnel straddling French-Swiss border. With an average depth of 200 meters (660 feet), the tunnel would accommodate a particle accelerator that would be more than three times the length of CERN's existing Large Hadron Collider, currently largest of its kind. The
LHC—a 27-kilometer proton-smashing ring running about 100 meters below ground—has among other things been used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson. Dubbed the God particle, the Nobel Prize-winning discovery broadened science's understanding of how particles acquire mass

Rich in possibilities
With LHC expected to have fully run its course by 2041, CERN has been analyzing options to allow scientists to keep pushing the envelope. Gianotti
hailed success of feasibility study, stressing we have found no technical showstopper os far. Others were similarly enthusiastic about the FCC. "To make major progress in its quest to understand the origin of the universe and the role the Higgs boson plays... the global scientific community needs a machine as powerful and rich in possibilities as the FCC," Catherine Biscarat of the L2IT lab at Toulouse University told AFP.

But not everyone is thrilled with the idea of the giant project, which has been estimated to cost 15 billion Swiss francs ($16.9 billion). CERN's member states—23 European countries & Israel—need to decide by 2028 whether to release the funds needed. But Germany, CERN's largest contributor, last year voiced reservations about the towering sums required. CERN spokesman Arnaud Marsollier tried to allay those concerns, insisting that upto 80% of FCC's cost "could be covered by the organization's budget.