The Large Hadron Collider: The Most Complex Machine Ever Built

Welcome to this series where I’ll be writing about 3 engineering marvels that I  am in awe of and often think about. Today’s post is all about the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful particle accelerator ever constructed. For convenience, I’ll be using the term LHC for the rest of this post. 

Let’s clear the elephant in the room first. What is a particle accelerator? What does it do? If you’ve ever taken a science class or even not, you will probably have heard that atoms make up everything. Atom means ‘indivisible’ and the name was coined because scientists at that time thought atoms could not be split. Now, though, we have a deeper understanding of an atom. It is made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. This is where the LHC comes in. What the LHC does is it takes these protons and speeds them up (literally accelerates) and smashes them into each other. Now, when I say it speeds protons up, I don’t mean 100 or 200 mph; it smashes into each other at nearly the speed of light (3×10^8 m/s). So, how on earth was this beast built?

The initial ideas for building the LHC dates back to the 80s and 90s It was a huge project, so CERN scientists and engineers spent nearly 2 decades extensively planning and designing the huge collider. Construction officially began in 1998, but was faced with challenges. For starters, the ring-like structure spanned 27km (about 17 miles) in circumference; they needed a land that was huge and deprived of human activity. It needed to be buried underground. Next, to make sure the particles move fast enough and collide with that amount of energy and force, they need to be cooled to a whooping -271.3 degrees celsius. For reference, that’s colder than outer space. All these requirements meant the budget had to be huge, and one of the biggest challenges of the LHC was funding issues. At an estimated cost of $10 billion, it was one of the most expensive projects in science history. This meant the funding had to come from dozens of countries, and financial management was key.


Despite all these challenges, the LHC was bui;t and has revolutionized particle physics. Its most notable breakthrough is the discovery of the Higgs Boson, also known as the god’s particle. It continues to contribute to the field of particle physics, and its construction astonishes people worldwide. It truly is an engineering marvel.