China intends to start building the world's most powerful supercollider in 2021 in a bid to quickly transform itself into the world leader in particle physics.

This Chinese beast, with the very un-Chinese name of "the Higgs Factory," will be housed in an underground circular tunnel almost twice the diameter of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland.

Like Us on Facebook

Chinese scientists say this monster is now in the planning stages but expect construction to start by 2021. The project is expected to cost some $6 billion and will be located in Qinhuangdao, a port city on the coast located in northeastern Hebei province.

Qinhuangdao was apparently chosen as the site because of its ideal geological conditions and its historic significance. The city is the place where the Great Wall of China ends as it meets the Bohai Sea.

As its name implies, the Higgs Factory is expected to produce millions of Higgs boson particles, a number far in excess of that produced so far by the LHC. The LHC is the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator. Operated by CERN, the LHC began operations on Sept. 10, 2008.

Supercolliders like the LHC and China's proposed Higgs Factory produce new and exotic particles by smashing sub-atomic particles together at close to the speed of light. The Chinese supercollider will sit inside a giant underground ring with a circumference of more than 50 kilometers as compared to the LHC's 27 kilometers.

China's Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) claims physicists from around the world are rushing to China to assist in the project.

"This is a machine for the world and by the world; not a Chinese one," said IHEP Director Wang Yifang.

China's Higgs Factory "would transport physics into a previously inaccessible high-energy realm," said a claim made in a book written by Harvard professor Shing-Tung Yau.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences, however, is critical of the project and objects to the huge funding the project will require.

Beijing, however, has yet to approve funding for the Higgs Factory.

Tagssupercollider, the Higgs Factory, china, Qinhuangdao, Large Hadron Collider, CERN, Institute of High Energy Physics