Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is being built in a circular tunnel 27 km in circumference. The tunnel is buried around 50 to 175 m. underground. It straddles the Swiss and French borders on the outskirts of Geneva

The LHC is designed to collide two counter rotating beams of protons or heavy ions. proton proton collision are foreseen at an energy of 7 TeV per beam

The beams move around the LHC ring inside a continuous vacuum guided by magnets.
The magnets are superconducting and are cooled by a huge cryogenics system. The cables conduct current without resistance in their superconducting state.
The beams will be stored at high energy for hours. During this time collisions take place inside the four main LHC experiments

Particle physics is the unbelievable in pursuit of the unimaginable. To pinpoint the smallest fragments of the universe you have to build the biggest machine in the world. To recreate the first millionths of a second of creation you have to focus energy on an awesome scale."

One of the first images from CMS, showing the debris of particles picked up in the detector's calorimeters and muon chambers after the beam was steered into the collimator

View of the beam pipe LHCb

View of the detector LHCb

View of the magnet ALICE