CERN Council Extraordinary Session in Budapest

The CERN Council, the supreme decision-making body of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, will hold its extraordinary session on Friday at the headquarters of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) in Budapest.

The CERN Council, which represents researchers from 25 member states including Hungary, will decide on the review and renewal of the European particle physics strategy, the MTA told MTI on Tuesday.

Every six or seven years, the particle physics community reviews and redefines the European particle physics strategy, which is then approved by the CERN Council.

The document, which the CERN decision-making body is expected to adopt at the Budapest session, will make recommendations on what should be the flagship project for the era following the Large Hadron Collider (LHC): how to research dark matter and dark energy, which make up 95% of the universe, and how all this can strengthen Europe's scientific competitiveness.

In the preparatory process over the past years, physicists have supported the construction of a Future Circular Collider (FCC), an electron-positron collider with even higher energy than the proton-proton collider LHC, which is thus expected to be the next major accelerator facility.

The FCC would be located in a 91-kilometer circumference underground ring tunnel, about three times longer than the LHC, and the energy of the particle beams would significantly exceed that of the previous circular collider.

The researchers aim to find answers to questions left unanswered by the Standard Model of particle physics, including the discovery of particles of dark matter, which makes up a significant part of the universe.

The CERN Council's final decision on starting the construction of the FCC is expected around 2028.

Hungary has been a full member of the Geneva-based organization since 1992.