The record energy reported last year was 5.36 TeV per nucleon pair [1]. That sounds like a lot until you remember that a nucleon is a bag of quarks held togethe

The record energy reported last year was 5.36 TeV per nucleon pair [1]. That sounds like a lot until you remember that a nucleon is a bag of quarks held together by gluons. Having two of these things collide spends the per-nucleon energy on all of them, and produces a magnificent mess of strongly interacting particles which is very hard to analyze. So when the posted article says, muons are fundamental particles that put all their energy into a collision, enabling a muon collider to compete with a hadron collider running at 10 times the energy. So the muon collider could be much smaller and, hence, cheaper. A 10-TeV muon collider could be had for $18 billion, advocates estimate. it actually understates the case for a muon collider. It is not just more efficient, it's also cleaner, since muons, like electrons, don't do strong interactions. [1] https://inspirehep.net/literature/2716566 https://inspirehep.net/literature/2716566