CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory outside Geneva, Switzerland, has embarked on a detailed feasibility study for the first stage of its Future Circular Collider (FCC). This stage, known as FCC-ee, would involve a machine to smash electrons together with antielectrons, and could cost some 15 billion Swiss francs (US$17 billion) by the time it is completed in the mid-2040s. The initial phase of that study, focusing on the technical aspects, had a positive outcome, CERN said in February. But Germany, which already contributes '267 million (US$290 million) annually to CERN ' some 20% of the lab's budget ' cannot afford to spend more, said Eckart Lilienthal of the country's Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) on 23 May, at a workshop for particle physicists in Bonn, Germany. The preliminary cost estimates for the FCC-ee 'are subject to a large number of uncertainties, the effects of which are still largely unknown', a BMBF spokesperson told Nature. 'The...
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