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The Large Hadron Collider tunnel, sector 3-4, CERN
The Large Hadron Collider tunnel, sector 3-4, CERN. Photo: Maximilien Brice (CERN) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
Science & space · Geneva · 2008 – today

CERN and the Large Hadron Collider

Established2008 CE – 2026 CECERN, near Geneva, Switzerland

The world's largest machine found the Higgs boson. It did not create a black hole, open a portal, or summon anything.

The Large Hadron Collider is a 27-kilometer ring of superconducting magnets in a tunnel about 100 meters beneath the French–Swiss border. It smashes protons together at nearly the speed of light. On 4 July 2012 its ATLAS and CMS experiments announced the discovery of a new particle with a mass of about 125 GeV, later confirmed as the Higgs boson.

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How to read the labels

EstablishedSupported by strong, converging evidence.
ContestedEvidence exists but qualified scholars disagree.
UnresolvedThe question is open; evidence does not settle it.
LegendComes from myth, literature or tradition, not physical evidence.
SpeculativeA hypothesis with little direct evidence so far.

Hero image: The Large Hadron Collider tunnel, sector 3-4, CERN. Photo: Maximilien Brice (CERN) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons. Evidence labels describe the written claims, not the image. Version 1 · updated 2026-10-22.