In early 2026, the future of the Future Circular Collider (FCC) became a subject of heavy debate among scientists, politicians, and critics. The FCC is a particle accelerator planned by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). It would have a circumference of almost 100 km, almost three times larger than the current largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and cost $20 billion. By splitting minuscule particles, the FCC would allow researchers to study topics like Higgs particles that the current LHC struggles to experiment with.
To critics, the FCC is nothing more than a twenty-billion-dollar luxury. They argue: Why should governments pour money into discovering particles no one can see? Why invest such great funds into abstract physics when there are dire social issues at hand? The FCC almost seems like an expensive, ambitious, and unnecessary toy for physicists.
This criticism sounds reasonable, but it’s also very shortsighted. Abstract science has proven time and time again to possess the possibility of supporting technological development, even if its usefulness might not be evident at the moment.
Take Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, for example. Although the concept itself deals with the warping of spacetime in objects with great mass—an idea generally impractical to daily life—it started playing a crucial role in GPS accuracy 40 years after the theory’s release. GPS accuracy relies on calculating the position of the user by measuring the time it takes for signals from the satellites to reach the user. Because the high speeds and altitudes of the satellite influence the flow of time as explained by the Theory of Relativity, engineers must correct the clocks on satellites to account for these errors. Otherwise, according to GPS World, GPS would drift by about 10 kilometers per day. Today, GPS not only enables navigation but also influences agriculture, emergency services, finance, and countless other systems we take for granted. Without the Theory of Relativity to predict the errors in calculations, much of modern technology and infrastructure would not be reliable.
A similar pattern was observed in the Human Genome Project. The Human Genome Project, an international research effort in biology, spent about three billion dollars sequencing the human genome. The project initially received similar critiques to the FCC today, highlighting the high cost and no immediate application. Yet today, thanks to this research, the price of analyzing human DNA dropped from billions to less than $1,000 per genome. This dramatic cost reduction cascaded into personalized cancer treatments, early disease detection, and the rapid vaccine development that proved crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic.
These examples in history point to the fact that pure science is never a waste. On top of the Theory of Relativity and the Human Genome Project, innovations like the World Wide Web and modern electronics were all unexpected byproducts of the science community and quantum mechanics, respectively. The FCC may follow the same trajectory. While exploring current mysteries like Higgs particles and the identity of dark matter, the FCC may eventually yield technologies like new superconductors, cancer therapy methods, and many more we cannot yet imagine.
Admittedly, the biggest concern for the FCC is the cost of the project. With a projected budget of $20 Billion, many criticisms arise from the argument that those funds could be used for alleviating immediate issues such as climate change or poverty. This view is not invalid—$20 billion is a large sum of funds that could make a difference in any field the money is invested in. However, human progress has never come from playing it safe or funding only what we immediately understand to be useful. Many celebrated discoveries inherently came from curiosity that fueled ambitious projects that seemed unreasonable until they became essential. The debate over the FCC is not just about subatomic particles or abstract physics; it is about whether we are the kind of civilization that knows to look beyond the horizon and invest in the future. Just as past generations invested in theories that seemed useless at the time, we now face the same choice. The $20 billion for the FCC is not caprice or luxury; it is an investment in the future and a deliberate effort to uncover the laws of nature that may power the technologies, medicine, and infrastructure of the next generation.
