CERN and the Large Hadron Collider

Exploring the World’s Most Powerful Particle Accelerator in Geneva.

CERN sits on the Franco-Swiss plain outside Geneva, positioned between the Alps and the Jura Mountains in a broad basin shaped by ancient glaciers. Beneath this quiet landscape lies the 27-kilometer Large Hadron Collider, built for roughly 4.75 billion Swiss francs.

Its surface facilities appear modest, but deep underground superconducting magnets chilled to 1.9 K accelerate protons to nearly the speed of light and guide them into detectors such as ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHCb.

The collider exists to reveal the structure of matter and the origins of the universe. It recreates conditions that appeared a fraction of a second after the Big Bang and allows physicists to investigate why particles have mass, what dark matter might be, and whether new forms of physics exist beyond current models.

These experiments show that the universe is governed by precise and delicate laws and that humanity can build instruments capable of probing the earliest moments of existence. CERN also faces controversy.

Critics question the price and purpose, and some members of the public promote fears about miniature black holes or fantastical ideas about portals. Despite this noise, the project remains one of the clearest examples of human curiosity pushing into the unknown.