World's biggest particle accelerator to be 32 km long

Cern scientists have upped the ante on the search of dark matter and are planning to build the world's biggest and most expensive particle accelerator - stretching up to a vast 32 kilometres.

The machine will surpass the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the particle accelerator that has a circumference of 27 km and was used in the hunt for the Higgs boson, the 'God particle' that gives matter its mass and whose discovery was announced last year.

The International Linear Collider (ILC), will smash subatomic particles together with such force that it could reveal evidence for new forms of matter and extra dimensions of space.

Some scientists are even calling it Einstein's telescope, because it would reveal why the physicist's equations work as they do.

The LHC is a very noisy machine. The ILC would comprise two giant 'guns', one accelerating electrons and the other particles of anti-matter called positrons to near-light speeds before smashing them together.

The machine will most certainly be built in Japan. The country is so keen to host the machine that it will put up half the 8 billion pounds cost - much of which would be spent drilling the huge underground tunnels needed to house it.