"Humanity's Quest: CERN's $17 Billion Plan for a 3-Times Bigger Particle Smasher"

CERN has proposed the construction of the $17 billion Future Circular Collider (FCC), which would be 3 times larger than the Large Hadron Collider. The FCC aims to probe the fringes of the Standard Model of particle physics by smashing particles at higher energies to discover unknown particles and forces, understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and investigate the matter-antimatter asymmetry. While some scientists are skeptical about the project's cost and potential, member states will decide on its greenlight in 2028, with the first phase expected to come online in 2045 and full operation in the 2070s.