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In the border region between France and Switzerland, between Lake Geneva and the Jura Mountains, a monumental construction lies hidden underground: a 27-kilometre-long, ring-shaped tunnel, and within it, the LHC – the Large Hadron Collider. Cern, caption, 2013
In the LHC, protons travel close to the speed of light before they are made to collide. The experiments conducted in the LHC serve fundamental research. ibid.
Cern: here scientists from all across the world united to explore the nature of reality itself. The most expensive experiment, the most complicated machine, the large Hadron Collider. The 2000s: The Decade We Saw It All IV, National Geographic 2015
French engineers and scientists are building a great scientific machine. It’s a nuclear accelerator called the Vivitron. It’s cost £8 billion. And part of it has come from Britain. Horizon: An Expensive Theology, BBC 1992
They’re working with the nucleus of the magnesium atom. The magnesium atoms are accelerated down this huge tower ... The nuclei are fired into a target also of magnesium. ibid.
The funding was established by treaty. ibid.
The first Cyclotron was a giant of its day. ibid.
The collision creates a tiny fireball getting close to the Big Bang at the start of our universe. ibid.
Quarks: five have been detected. ibid.
Cern costs £350 million a year ... Cern is governed by international treaty. ibid.
Mrs Thatcher even visited Cern to enthuse over the experiments. ibid.
The particle physicists are asking for funds for the next stage of their research. ibid.
The Americans are planning an even bigger rival. Here in Texas they’ve started construction on the Superconducting Super Collider. ibid.
Their method: nothing less than creating the moment that exploded everything into existence. The Big Bang. Horizon: The Six Billion Dollar Experiment, BBC 2007
The machine under construction here the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) promises to show us the moment that Nature has hid from our view. The moment after the Big Bang. ibid.
Every second there will be eight hundred million collisions. Just a tiny fraction will be of interest. As the protons fragment, a magnetic field generated by the detector separates out the different types of matter. Among these pieces may be found the indivisible units that make up our entire universe. Some will exist for just one thousandth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. ibid.
The thing that is missing is the thing that gives the fundamental particles substance, that turns them into matter we can touch. It’s called Mass. Without mass the fundamental particles would all travel at the speed of light. The universe that we see simply wouldn’t have formed. Horizon: The Six Billion Dollar Experiment, BBC 2007
The Higgs Field is the missing piece in the standard model. It can explain how we can have a world of solid object from objects that appear to have no mass. ibid.
It’s been nicknamed the God Particle. So far the Higgs has eluded physicists. But they hope the Large Hadron Collider will reveal it by going back to a moment that has been hidden from view – the time just after the Big Bang. Perhaps what’s most striking about the search for the Higgs is where it may take us. Some scientists believe its discovery could lead to an extraordinary level of insight about the universe. Horizon: The End of God? A Horizon Guide to Science and Religion, BBC 2010
What goes on beneath these fields in the Tevitron are some of the most violent collisions in the universe. Deep underground in a four-mile vacuum pipe, encased by superconducting magnets, they smash together two sub-atomic particles at close to the speed of life. Horizon: What Is Reality? BBC 2011
Working out which of these are elementary is a problem that has defined particle physics for over sixty years ... When experimenters first broke into them [atoms] they discovered ever smaller bits inside. ibid.
The particle zoo – a whole new level of reality had been discovered. ibid.
With the discovery of the Top quark, physicists are close to understanding one of the greatest mysteries of reality: what it’s all made of. ibid.
The most important particle of all - the Higgs Boson ... The Higgs is now Fermilab’s number one priority. But they aren’t the only ones looking for it. They have competition. From the biggest particle accelerator of them all – the Large Hardron Collider in Geneva. It is more than three times as powerful. ibid.
Just before Christmas researchers working at Cern near Geneva announced that they’d caught a tantalising glimpse of the Higgs-Boson. Professor Jim Al-Khalili, The Hunt For the Higgs: A Horizon Special, BBC 2012
The LHC has been switched off for two years while it’s being upgraded ... [using] twice the energy it did before. Horizon: Dancing in the Dark – The End of Physics, BBC 2015
Five days ago hundreds of the world’s brainiest people descended on a hotel in Chicago. They had come to hear news from particle physicists working in Cern ... They were on the brink of a huge discovery: a strange bump on a graph suggested that they might have discovered a brand new particle. Horizon: Inside Cern, BBC 2016
The biggest particle-hunting machine that has ever been built ... two beams of protons are sent hurtling around a twenty-seven-kilometre loop before being smashed together to make sub-atomic particles. ibid.
Unexpected bursts of photons – this could be evidence of a brand new particle. ibid.
The dream of the 750GEB bump is over. ibid.
The largest and most complex scientific experiment ever attempted. The Large Hadron Collider or LHC has just one simple but audacious aim: to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang. Brian Cox, The Big Bang Machine, Eden 2008
It tells us how the fundamental constituents of the cosmos took on their form. ibid.
Building an instrument capable of recreating the early universe and finding the massive Higgs Boson has taken decades. ibid.
For some theorists finding nothing at the LHC is actually the most exciting prospect. ibid.
One of the most strange and enigmatic of the particles is the Higgs-Boson (not yet found). And that’s what scientists here at Cern are trying to do. According to scientific theory, the Higgs particle ought to be there, somewhere in the sub-atomic soul of the atom. Without it, atoms would have no substance. The universe would have no substance ... One scientist has called Higgs, the God Particle. Robert Winston, The Story of God, BBC 2005
Higgs suggested that an invisible force field swept the universe in the first second, giving particles their mass: it’s become known as the Higgs Field. When particles interacted with it they gained mass ... Scientists think the Higgs Field is carried by its own special particle. What journalists refer to as the God particle scientists call the Higgs Boson ... In Geneva, Switzerland, is mankind’s most expensive experiment, the large Hadron Collider or LHC. The world’s biggest particle accelerator, and the best chance of finding the elusive Higgs Boson ... It took $40 billion, took 10 years to build and involved the work of 7,000 scientists. Big Bang
We have made the discovery of a new particle – a completely new particle – which is most probably very different from all the other particles. It's nearly a once in a lifetime experience, I would say. Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director of CERN
There are still many open questions that need to be answered. We have every possible idea – but the final answer can only come from experimentation. And the only experiments that can provide answers are those taking place at the Large Hadron Collider. Which makes this an exciting moment – we may get new clues from outside the Standard Model to answer the questions we still have. Hubert Kroha, Max Planck Institute for Physics