Chinese scientists are completing the initial conceptual plans on the world’s largest particle collider, which when finally constructed, will be twice as large the current lead, CERN‘s Large Hadron Collider in Geneva (sorta, it is beneath the border of France and Switzerland). Despite the fact that the LHC has literally just had its power increased to the highest any particle accelerator has reached in June, the new collidor will garner a tremendous amount of global cooperation.

Al Jazeera reports it will be named the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC), China hopes that this project will place the country at the forefront of scientific research. It will be approximately 80 km in circumference or to put it into perspective, the structure would be able to insert Manhattan and still have a little bit of breathing room.

The idea behind this ginormous device is to get two high-energy particle beams to move at an extremely fast speed (close to the speed of light) and then made to collide. The results are then recorded and analyzed for possible answers to how our universe was formed. Basically, the larger the circumference, the faster the beams can go.

Incidentally, CERN has plans to also build the “world’s largest particle collider” or the Future Circular Collider (FCC) which although is behind China’s timeline by four years, is going to be three times the size of the Large Hadron Collider. ALL THE MACHINES!

All this will be subterranean however imagining carving out that much earth to place a perfect ring inside that can contain a city within it is a little freaky..or just the beginning of the Reptilian take over. Either way, these projects will be the center of scientific exploration into the origins of our universe. Last time they discovered the “god” particle so the possibilities with even larger speeds of collision being reached.

Smashing.