Linear collider race gets serious

An international group of particle physicists based at the DESY laboratory in Hamburg, Germany has staked its claim to host the world's next major accelerator by unveiling plans for a Euro 3.3136bn (about $2.8bn) linear collider. Last month the TESLA collaboration revealed its design for a 33 km long collider that would smash electrons and positrons together at energies of 500 billion electron volts (0.5 TeV) to probc physics beyond the Standard Model. The machine would also incorporate a powerful X-ray laser to carry out research in condensed-matter physics, chemistry, biology and materials Science.