A very high energy hadron collider on the Moon

Abstract

The long-term prospect of building a hadron collider around the circumference of a great circle of the Moon is sketched. A Circular Collider on the Moon (CCM) of ~11000 km in circumference could reach a proton-proton center-of-mass collision energy of 14 PeV --- a thousand times higher than the Large Hadron Collider at CERN --- optimistically assuming a dipole magnetic field of 20 T. Several aspects of such a project are presented, including siting, construction, availability of necessary materials on the Moon, and powering, as well as a discussion of future studies and further information needed to determine the more concrete feasibility of each. Machine parameters and vacuum requirements are explored, and an injection scheme is delineated. Other unknowns are set down. Due to the strong interest from multiple organizations in establishing a permanent Moon presence, a CCM could be the (next-to-) next-to-next-generation discovery machine and a natural successor to next-generation machines, such as the proposed Future Circular Collider at CERN or a Super Proton-Proton Collider in China, and other future machines, such as a Collider in the Sea, in the Gulf of Mexico. A CCM would serve as an important stepping stone towards a Planck-scale collider sited in our Solar System.

Accelerator Technology and Beam Physics of Future Colliders

“…Following the FCC a possible next or next-next step in this direction could be a circular collider on the Moon (CCM) [67]. With a circumference of about 11 Mm, a centre-of-mass energy of about 14 PeV (1,000 times the energy of the LHC), based on 6 × 10 5 dipoles with 20 T field, either ReBCO, requiring ~7-13 ktons of rare-earth elements, or iron-based superconductor (IBS), requiring of order a million tons of IBS [67]. Many of the raw materials required to construct machine, injector complex, detectors, and facilities can potentially be sourced directly on the Moon.…”

“…A "Dyson band" or "Dyson belt" could be used to continuously collect Sun power. Operating the collider would require the equivalent of 0.1% of the Sun power incident on Moon surface [67].…”