Last week, a proposal for the Future Circular Collider revealed at CERN sparked a lot of discussion. The biggest stumbling block was the hefty price tag, with estimates of around $10 billion or more. While Elon Musk tweeted he could help save billions by digging the necessary tunnel, the QM wondered: how much is $10 billion actually?

Well, here are 10 things with a similar price tag to the Future Circular Collider:

What?	Price tag	How many FCCs?
USA military spending (annually)	$677.1 billion	67
Brexit divorce bill	£39 ($51) billion	5
US government shutdown (start of this year)	$6 billion	0.6
Harvard University endowment	$39.2 billion	4
Administrative staff of the European Union (annually)	$11 billion	1
GDP of Luxembourg	$62.4 billion	6
Properties owned by the British Crown Estate	£12 ($16) billion	1.6
Tax breaks Amazon for opening new offices	$2.2 billion	0.2
Noord-Zuidlijn (metro line in Amsterdam)	€3.1 ($3.5) billion	0.3
USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) aircraft carrier	$12.8 billion (+ $4.7 billion for R&D)	1-2

In comparison to these examples, it seems a lot less money than it did before – especially as a one-off construction cost, split by many different governments. If the European Union will indeed foot the bill will depend on the outcome of the European Strategy for Particle Physics Update, a conversation taking place over the next two years.

After this post was published, I became aware of several other figures of note. Examples include: $14.5 billion in tax evasion by Apple via the “double Irish with a Dutch sandwich” offshore tax construction (1.4 FCCs), an estimated $550 million for active-duty troops’ deployment at the US-Mexico border in 2019 alone (0.05 FCCs). Please feel free to contribute examples in the comment section – in particular relating to government spending.