Hamburg, 23rd March 2001 – According to current scientific findings, the big bang lasted less than a trillionth of a second, about 15,000 million years ago. It was caused by an inconceivably high energy density which exploded at just as inconceivable temperatures, so creating the universe. As of 2011, an international group of researchers in the North of Germany plans to reconstruct the big bang, to simulate the beginnings of the cosmos and to examine all the details in a series of experiments. For this purpose, they need a superconducting linear accelerator for teraelectronvolt energies (TESLA). Tera is the scientific abbreviation for 1,000,000 million.

For the 3877 million Euro project (or around 7600 million German marks) spread over a time period of ten years, under the overall leadership of Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, a 33 kilometre long tunnel has to be built between 10 and 30 meters below ground, following the curvature of the earth. Forty - one scientific institutes from nine countries have already been involved in the research and development work on the TESLA linear accelerator. When the highly accelerated electrons and positrons collide head-on, they form a "ball of fire" of extremely highly concentrated pure energy. This simulates the concentration of energy during the first trillionth of a second after the beginning of the universe. As happened in the big bang, new elementary particles emerge from this energy. The physicists can thus simulate the beginnings of the cosmos and carry out experiments to examine all of this in great detail.

The project will be monitored by the German Scientific Council until the summer of 2002 and a decision can then be made by the Federal Government. One aspect of TESLA is a new X-ray laser. It surpasses by far, all X-ray sources available to date and allows brilliant insight into atomic dimensions. It will be possible to make three-dimensional images of materials with atomic precision and to track them as they change (more or less like a film), even making hologram images of them. Research will obtain an insight, unachieved to date, into the build-up and behaviour of material structures and thus create the possibility of developing new types of materials. A look at the molecular structure of chemical and biological substances could make a decisive contribution to understanding the processes of life.

According to DESY, the preparatory work for the project already began in 1992 with a wide-scale collaboration of scientists from nine different nations. The feasibility of the project has now been proven – it is therefore ready for decisions to be made. To this end the 41 institutes from nine countries now involved presented the "Technical Design Report" for TESLA today, at a scientific symposium. The 1424 pages in five volumes, provide all the scientific and technical details on the megaproject. 1134 scientists from 36 countries have worked on this report which documents the huge international interest for using the new facility. The symposium will last two days and more than 700 participants are expected from home and abroad.

The superconducting acceleration technology developed during the collaboration is the only one of its kind in the world, as the project managers emphasise. In the research and development work for the project, two decisive technical breakthroughs have been achieved in the past few years, with which the feasibility of the facility could be proved. These were the superconducting structures in which the required high acceleration fields can be achieved and a new type of X-ray laser which works in a completely new way.

As DESY Director Professor Albrecht Wagner says, TESLA brings scientists of various fields together and furthers interdisciplinary work on complex research subjects. New ground can thus be broken in science which would otherwise be hidden to the individual disciplines. "Different schools of thought and fields of knowledge meet here. That is why TESLA can become the heart of an innovative research centre," he says. TESLA makes a special contribution to the training and continuing education of highly qualified and up-and-coming scientists and thus towards safeguarding the future of Germany as a place for industrial investment. They would become the key players in the performance and innovation "needed by our society to safeguard our standard of living". The obvious thing is to set up and run TESLA as an international facility, as national initiatives for such large and expensive projects do not make sense. The DESY scientists are convinced that the TESLA concept is superior to other proposals which follow similar objectives and will gain international acceptance. Once the review and approval procedures have been concluded, planning permission obtained for the construction work and the international agreements signed, tunnelling work could perhaps begin as early as 2003. Following a further eight years of construction time, the scientific community could have a new kind of facility at its disposal by around 2011 "which promises unique impetuses of innovation in a broad range of fields in research and technology, from the origin and composition of matter to the fundamental principles of life itself".

As an accelerator creates neither noise nor noxious fumes and cannot explode, its operation causes no damage to the environment. The radiation released by the subterranean accelerators is negligibly small, Wagner assures. The level of radiation reaching the surface is less than one hundredth of the natural environmental radiation. The DESY researchers can look back on many years of experience with other accelerators such as, for example, the 6.3 kilometre long HERA accelerator. The operation of HERA does not affect the environment. DESY has been in contact with the local population and political committees since 1996, as well as with the 15 communities in the Pinneberg district along the planned TESLA line. "It is remarkable how positive and open-minded the people are about the TESLA project," reports Petra Folkerts, spokesperson for DESY.