Although built from 1996 to 2008, the Large Hadron Collider relies on accelerators built starting in 1955 to help bring protons to 99.9999991% the speed of light—about 3.28 million football fields per second.

At the Large Hadron Collider, protons are accelerated so close to the speed of light that they would lag behind a laser by just 10 feet after 14 minutes of travel.

Learn about five of the largest particle accelerators on Earth, which, as of 2026, are led by the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Particle accelerators propel matter toward small targets at high speed

Devices like cathode-ray tube televisions were once basic particle accelerators, but modern ones, such as the Large Hadron Collider, use massive magnetic fields and circular tunnels to achieve energies high enough to recreate the conditions just after the big bang.

The High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider will provide a tenfold increase in particle collisions compared with the initial LHC infrastructure by increasing the number of ions in collision bundles and by concentrating the ion beams.

The Large Hadron Collider repurposed an excavation tunnel built for the Large Electron-Positron Collider, which was used until 2000 and whose construction involved the largest civil engineering project in Europe before the Channel Tunnel.

Experiments at the LEP, which first ran in 1989, studied the electroweak interaction, which governs radioactive decay.

The most common type of particle accelerator is a linear electron accelerator, which fires particles in a straight line, making them useful for the intense, targeted beams needed in cancer treatment.

The first circular particle accelerator was narrower than the average cereal bowl

The 1939 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Ernest Lawrence for inventing the cyclotron. By comparison, the Large Hadron Collider is 5 miles in diameter and is the largest cryogenic system in the world, cooling its electromagnets to temperatures colder than those found in outer space.

Watch an animated visualization of how the Large Hadron Collider works, including how particles are accelerated through a series of machines before colliding and how collision data is collected and distributed around the world.

Each year, the Large Hadron Collider undergoes a winter shutdown—when electricity costs are highest—and bringing it back online requires weeks of tests, including some involving high-energy particles from outer space.

The total length of superconducting wire at the Large Hadron Collider spans about 250,000 kilometers (155,000 miles)—enough to wrap around the equator 6.8 times.

Explore the components of the linear particle accelerator at Los Alamos

Located at the site of bomb design and development for the Manhattan Project, LANSCE features an injector system for hydrogen ions, a series of tanks with alternating electric fields for proton acceleration, and an isotope production facility that creates radioisotopes for medical treatments.

At the CERN Control Center, where the Large Hadron Collider and connected accelerators are managed, champagne bottles from parties commemorating major milestones, such as the first collisions or a new record energy, are collected.

Take a 360-degree tour of ATLAS, one of two general-purpose detectors at the Large Hadron Collider and the largest particle detector by volume ever built. (VR device-compatible)

Weighing about as much as the Eiffel Tower, ATLAS integrates concentric layers of sensors to analyze the properties of particles produced in collisions of accelerated ions. More than 3 petabytes of data—equivalent to 600 years of music—are collected from this experiment each year.

On average, the Large Hadron Collider uses 1.3 terawatt-hours of electricity annually—equivalent to about 124,000 US homes—generated by a French substation.

As of 2026, 75 of the 86 particles discovered by the Large Hadron Collider have been found by the LHCb experiment—a detector that explores the decay of particles made of beauty and charm quarks.

The Large Hadron Collider is the world's largest cryogenic system, which uses 10,000 metric tons of liquid nitrogen and 120 metric tons of helium to cool 36,000 metric tons of magnets to temperatures colder than outer space.

How the Antimatter Factory works, and why antimatter transport is so difficult

At CERN, protons are accelerated to 99.93% the speed of light and collide with iridium to create antiprotons. These particles are then slowed and sent to various research experiments. Moving the antimatter to other locations for study requires trapping it in electromagnetic fields to prevent contact with normal matter, which would cause annihilation.

CERN—the European Organization for Nuclear Research—is the world's largest particle physics laboratory, with the Large Hadron Collider serving as its largest tool.

As of 2023, the world's smallest particle accelerator is smaller than a penny

The prototype is an example of a photonic accelerator, which utilizes tiny lasers to accelerate electrons rather than relying on oscillating electromagnetic fields to move them. It can deliver about 1 electron per second with energies equivalent to those found in cathode-ray tube televisions.

Through 2038, the Large Hadron Collider research program is expected to generate societal benefits of €25.6B, or €3.3B more than operating costs and investments.

Despite fears of creating black holes, the Large Hadron Collider produces collisions with energies of 13.6 trillion electronvolts, about 10 million times smaller than the energy needed to create the lightest possible black holes.