You could build a circular machine 3x the size of the Large Hadron Collider to collide electrons and positrons; you could upgrade the LHC, or even build a next-generation linear accelerator. Probing higher energies offers the hope of new physics — it could be supersymmetry, it could be something else, I don’t know what. But before exploring higher energies, it makes sense to me to build a muon collider, and to clarify the question of the Higgs first. Here we already have a particle that we want to explore. We may even find signs of new physics by studying the Higgs very precisely. For that we don’t need to go to a 100-kilometer-around tunnel. Think about how many days it takes to walk 100 kilometers! And it all has to be extremely functional, every single piece has to work — it’s a miracle if people succeed in making it work.
Against High Energy Physics
high energy physics thinks that bigger colliders will let them find new particles, but this view is probably wrong.