Because the LHC isn't big enough, it seems

[ThePaladin]

There are plans for even larger machines:

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a giant 17-mile underground loop full of supercooled magnets, thirty-foot particle detectors, and miles of accelerator tubes.

It's the largest machine that humans have ever built.

But there are plans for even larger machines.

One, a whopping 50-mile-long circular particle accelerator with energy collisions nearly 10 times as powerful as the LHC, might be a little too ambitious for the near future. We don't even know how to build magnets capable of accelerating particles to that kind of energy level.

The second idea, however, is a 20-mile-long straight line accelerator and it has a good chance of being built in the next few years.

Just because they can?

[Nanny]

Congress was allowing one, as were the area officials, in Waxahachie, Texas, I think it was in the 90s. It was going to be considerably more powerful than this thing in Geneva is! But Congress ended up pulling funding. The thing was partially built, seems vague in my memory. They've been pushing for bigger and better and came dang close. Obviously, even in such an unstable world economy they are a determined bunch. (IMO it was God's mercy that blocked this thing in Waxahachie, for all of us not just for Texas of course.)