Since 2026, the Large Hadron Collider has provided heat to thousands of French homes and businesses through a system that harnesses hot water from the accelerator's cooling circuits.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Water acts as a coolant and a moderator of nuclear reactions in reactors

Nuclear reactions within a containment structure boil water into steam, which drives a turbine that generates electricity. This water is then recirculated via pumps back into the containment structure to repeat the process, with reaction rates lowered by the insertion of control rods that absorb neutrons, which trigger reactions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Data centers require interconnected server- and building-level cooling systems

Computer equipment can be cooled by circulating cold air or water through the equipment racks, siphoning the heated fluid into a heat exchanger. This exchanger transfers thermal energy to building cooling systems, which can dispose of the heat by evaporative cooling—the way humans cool off by sweating—or via air conditioning.

The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid—a distributed system of 2 billion gigabytes of storage across over 40 countries—manages data produced by the Large Hadron Collider.

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.

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.

Data centers can be kept cool by circulating fluid over plates atop high-temperature components or by submerging equipment in non-corrosive oil that does not conduct electricity.

Geothermal power can generate electricity and provide direct heating for homes

By drilling several kilometers through penetrable rock, wells can access highly pressurized groundwater warmed by thermal energy trapped beneath Earth's surface. This water can be turned into steam to create electricity in generators. Heating systems several meters deep can pump fluid underground before circulating it through buildings.

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.

Heat pumps use an easily boilable chemical to regulate temperature

In air conditioners, warm air is pulled from a home to turn a refrigerant into a gas, which is then compressed, raising its temperature. The gas naturally releases this energy to the comparatively cooler environment when exposed, then expands and is reused in the system. Heaters run in reverse, with the refrigerant picking up energy from the comparatively warmer environment.

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.

A basement of mechanical systems—collectively called the technosphere—supports B2

Twenty-six underground air handlers heat, cool, filter and manage the humidity of the air across the biomes of Biosphere 2. The above-ground Energy Center complex provides continuous power to these and other systems, including heating and cooling water for laboratory experiments and personal use.

Data centers' electrical needs create increased water demands beyond cooling

Each query uses approximately one single-serving water bottle per conversation, but water is also used for steam cycles and cooling in power plants that generate electricity for data centers. Newer cooling methods, such as immersion cooling, where servers are submerged in fluids that don't conduct electricity, can minimize water use.