The Large Hadron Collider is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research over a ten year period from 1998 to 2008. It is a located near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100m underground. It is a particle accelerator for studying the smallest known particles. Two beams of subatomic particles called hadrons travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. LHC discovered its first new particle. It is called Chi_b (3P) and will help scientists understand better the forces that hold matter together.
credit: ConradMelvin