A conference was held at the Chikushino City Lifelong Learning Center on Feb. 10 about the International Linear Collider, a proposed next-generation particle accelerator, and the ripple effect it would have if it were built in Kyushu. Kyushu University Graduate School of Science professor Kiyotomo Kawagoe said, “Not only do I want people to understand how important the ILC is, I would like them to cooperate with our efforts to bring the facility here.”
The ILC is a superconducting linear accelerator that would be installed in an underground tunnel. Particles would be collided at nearly the speed of light to create a high energy state akin to that at the birth of the universe.
Source. (click to enlarge graphic)
Two candidate sites for the ILC are in Japan: the Sefuri Mountains on the Fukuoka-Saga border and the Kitakami Mountains in Iwate Prefecture. Professor Kawagoe, who is a member of the research team that discovered the Higgs-Boson particle, made a strong case for bringing the ILC to Kyushu: “By attracting thousands of researchers from around the globe, the ILC will become Japan’s first world-class research center… [and] an unexpected major discovery could be made in Japan.” Source: Nishinippon Shimbun, Feb. 12
Official HP: http://www.linearcollider.org
