CERN - Large Hadron Collider tunnel

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the highest-energy particle collider ever made and is considered as "one of the great engineering milestones of mankind." It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) from 1998 to 2008, with the aim of allowing physicists to test the predictions of different theories of particle physics and high-energy physics, and particularly prove or disprove the existence of the theorized Higgs particle and of the large family of new particles predicted by supersymmetric theories. The LHC is expected to address some of the still unsolved questions of physics, advancing human understanding of physical laws. It contains seven detectors each designed for specific kinds of exploration.

The LHC was built in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries, as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference, as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.