Within ALICE—A Large Ion Collider Experiment—at the Large Hadron Collider, scientists have created quark-gluon plasma—an exotic form of matter present in the moments after the Big Bang.

The Higgs boson is a quanta, or discrete piece, of the Higgs field, which gives elementary particles, such as quarks and electrons, mass as they travel through it.

Once called 'aces,' quarks are fundamental pieces of matter that combine to create over 100 known composite particles, including the proton and neutron.

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.

Quarks are elementary particles that come in six varieties and combine together to form larger, composite particles, such as the proton and the neutron.

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.

View a ranking of the masses of fundamental particles, from the massless photon to the top quark, and a timeline of their discoveries.

At CERN's Antimatter Factory, researchers create and guide antiprotons and antielectrons together to form antihydrogen, and all these antiparticles are analyzed to help scientists study the behavior of antimatter.

Explaining the Higgs boson, also known as the 'God Particle'

The Higgs boson is a long sought after fundamental particle that—within the framework of high-energy physics—gives other particles their mass. Having captured public attention when it was discovered in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider, and its...

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.

At the Large Hadron Collider, scientists have transformed lead into gold—a process known as chrysopoeia, which alchemists sought for centuries.

Although built from 1996 to 2008, the Large Hadron Collider relies on accelerators built starting in 1954 to help bring protons to 99.9999991% the speed of light—about 2.73 million football fields per second.

View a timeline of particle discoveries through the Higgs boson in 2012

With few exceptions, the elementary particles that make up the Standard Model were theorized or predicted to exist before their eventual discovery in high-energy environments. These predictions were often the result of inferences drawn from already accepted mathematical models.

Unlike the other major detectors at the Large Hadron Collider, the Compact Muon Solenoid—one of two general-purpose detectors—was built above ground and then lowered underground in sections for reassembly.

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

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

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.

Some particles that mediate fundamental forces in nature are their own antiparticles, such as photons—particles of light and mediators of the electromagnetic force.

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.

Antimatter was discovered by examining debris from collisions between atmospheric gases and cosmic rays—high-energy matter particles from space.

The deceptively simple proton

Take a visual deep-dive into the proton, a near-fundamental—but deceivingly simple—building block of nature. Among other beguiling characteristics, the particle can't be described by its constituent particles (quarks), but rather exists in a...

Explore all the particles that make up the Standard Model

This interactive organizes all the particles of matter and force in the Standard Model alongside the Higgs boson. Clicking on any particle will display a brief description and several properties, such as discovery year, mass, and charge.

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.

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.

Particle interactions follow rules related to specific quantum properties

Like a business whose purchased inventory matches sold inventory, physicists identified specific patterns across decades of particle accelerator data, which became new conservation laws for elementary particles. These laws help identify which particle decays are expected or forbidden.

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)

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.

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second.

Scientists have determined the properties of cosmic rays by analyzing their trajectories in bubble chambers—containers filled with a vapor that clings to charged particles.

As of 2025, LUX-ZEPLIN is the world's most sensitive dark matter experiment, which is designed to indirectly detect a potential candidate for the invisible form of matter.

Particle accelerators detect subatomic particles using millions of sensors

Calorimeters measure the energy of particles. Tracking devices can measure momentum and charge from the trajectory of particles, which is determined by recording tiny electrical signals. Time-of-flight detectors provide particle velocities directly and particle mass indirectly, giving physicists a suite of properties to compare with those of known matter.

Antimatter particles possess the same mass and spin as their normal particle counterparts, but possess an opposite charge and transform into pure energy upon colliding with normal matter.

The hypothetical matter that neutron stars' cores may contain, including strange quarks

Models of the extreme pressures and energies in neutron stars suggest conditions resembling those believed to have existed within a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. In these environments, the quarks that make up protons and neutrons in trios may instead form pairs that combine to form one quantum object. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Antimatter's rarity across the cosmos is one of the biggest problems in modern physics because the high-energy environment of the early universe should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter.

If particle accelerators did create black holes by packing tremendous energy into a small volume, then trillions would be created in Earth's atmosphere daily by cosmic rays.

The Higgs boson provides a mechanism that explains why some particles have mass

The mathematics of quantum field theory suggested that force particles should be massless, like the photon for electromagnetism, but the weak nuclear force’s equivalent W and Z particles are not. The Higgs field provides mass when interacting with such particles.