About
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, straddling the French-Swiss border, is the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator. Built in a 27 km circular tunnel 100 meters underground, it accelerates protons to 99.9999991% the speed of light and collides them, recreating conditions that existed microseconds after the Big Bang.
The LHC confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson in 2012, completing the Standard Model of particle physics — one of science's greatest achievements. Its detectors (ATLAS and CMS) generate 15 petabytes of data annually. The LHC required contributions from 10,000 scientists from 100 countries and cost approximately $6 billion to build.
# Top 10 Large Hadron Collider facts
- 1The LHC accelerates protons to 99.9999991% the speed of light before colliding them
- 2It confirmed the Higgs boson in 2012, completing the Standard Model of physics
- 3The LHC generates 15 petabytes of data per year — requiring a global computing grid to process
Fascinating Facts
- ◆The LHC accelerates protons to 99.9999991% the speed of light before colliding them
- ◆It confirmed the Higgs boson in 2012, completing the Standard Model of physics
- ◆The LHC generates 15 petabytes of data per year — requiring a global computing grid to process
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