The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a massive underground particle accelerator located in Switzerland.
About the LHC[]
An international team has installed the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in a 27-kilometer ring buried deep below the countryside on the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland. The LHC is the world's most powerful particle accelerator. Its very-high-energy proton collisions are yielding extraordinary discoveries about the nature of the physical universe. Beyond revealing a new world of unknown particles, the LHC experiments could explain why those particles exist and behave as they do. The LHC experiments could reveal the origins of mass, shed light on dark matter, uncover hidden symmetries of the universe, and possibly find extra dimensions of space.
LHC Detectors[]
ATLAS | One of two general purpose detectors. ATLAS will be used to look for signs of new physics, including the origins of mass and extra dimensions. |
CMS | The other general purpose detector will, like ATLAS, hunt for the Higgs boson and look for clues to the nature of dark matter. |
ALICE | ALICE is studying a "fluid" form of matter called quark–gluon plasma that existed shortly after the Big Bang. |
LHCb | Equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created in the Big Bang. LHCb will try to investigate what happened to the "missing" antimatter. |