Researched
Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
The 27-km ring at CERN near Geneva has collided protons at up to 13.6 TeV, the highest energy ever reached, and it is where the Higgs boson was found in 2012.
Open in the interactive tree →The LHC runs in a tunnel 50 to 175 m underground with 1,232 superconducting dipole magnets kept at 1.9 K by about 96 tonnes of superfluid helium. First protons circulated on 10 September 2008; on 19 September a magnet quench released about six tonnes of helium and damaged 53 magnets, and beams returned in November 2009. Collisions at 7 TeV (2010), 13 TeV (2015) and 13.6 TeV (2022) let ATLAS and CMS announce the Higgs boson on 4 July 2012, and in March 2025 LHCb reported the first CP violation in baryons, a step toward explaining why matter outlived antimatter.
Prerequisites
- Cryogenics (Liquefied Air & Helium)1895-1908Its magnets are held at 1.9 K by superfluid helium.
- Particle Accelerators1932A ring collider is the latest accelerator type
- CERN (Particle Physics Lab)1954CERN built and runs the machine
- Superconducting Magnets19611,232 superconducting dipoles bend the beams
Unlocks
- Higgs Boson Discovered2012ATLAS and CMS found the Higgs boson in LHC collisions
- Matter-Antimatter AsymmetryopenLHCb at the LHC saw CP violation in baryons in 2025