Where is the world's largest particle accelerator located?

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. It is the largest single machine in the world. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scienti sts and engineers from over 100 countries, as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.

It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 miles) in circumference, as deep as 175 metres (574 feet) beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva, Switzerland. Its first research run took place from March 30, 2010 to February 13, 2013 at an initial energy of 3.5 teraelectronvolts (TeV) per beam (7 TeV total), almost 4 times more than the previous world record for a collider.

The LHC's aim is to allow physicists to test the predictions of different theories of particle physics and high energy physics. The LHC is always operating at the very boundaries of scientific knowledge. Physicists hope that the LHC will clearly help answer some of the fundamental open questions in physics, concerning the basic laws governing the interactions and forces among the elementary objects, the deep structure of space and time, and in particular the interrelationship between quantum mechanics and general relativity.

More Info: en.wikipedia.org

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30 Comments

Richard Adams

I knew this thanks to the big bang theory

Marguerite LaHaye

I got the answer from having read Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons.

Playerkevin

What new and discovered things have been found in the last few years with the LHC?

Charles Borg

The largest linear particle accelerator on Earth, located at the SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, is two miles long.

Marg Harris

Richard Adams, Haha!! I did too!! 😄

Joanne Serin

Richard Adams, I knew the name from BBT, but thought it was in Sweden.

galambos

My son has conducted experiments using the collider. He was working at the Imperial Collage in London at the time. He is a chemical engineer. I asked him to see what would happen to stained glass that i used in my projects. It turned it black. so much for something unusual.

illonabird

There is no particle between his ears. Not even sure of air in there.

Carroll Price

Started construction on a super collider at Waxahachie, Texas, but abandoned the project.

Char

That was a total flop

Annie

Should have known the location since I find the concept so fascinating!

stellaclaude

I think it was mentioned in the Angels & Demons movie?!

Siegfried Proslmeyr

Sandra Caulfield, in simple terms, Hadrons are the particles that make up Atoms, like Protons and Neutrons. So if think of them as marbles, they speed them up around a large ring shaped tunnel and smash them together, then they look at the pieces and come up with theories about what they marbles are made of.

Ron Higginbotham

Thanks ! Big Bang Theory, I got it right.

Barry G Hitchens

Sandra Caulfield, No its not!---a molcule of every one of 114 known elements of the "periodic table"...consists of neutons(no charge) and electrons( positive charge). Bt these particles too are made up of sub atomic smaller particles. By bombarding their nucleous at nearlly the speed of light (CERN),we split it apart to reveal its sub-structure in more detail--about 14 sub atomic particles have been identified..