The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) , buried on the French-Swiss border, was commissioned for the first time on September 10, 2008, after fourteen years of arduous work. It is located at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research).
At around 09:30 that morning, the first beam of protons was injected into the large tunnel of 27 km in circumference in a clockwise direction . Scientists in CERN’s control room celebrated the historic moment with applause. “A short trip for a proton, but a giant step for humanity!” Declared Nigel S. Lockyer, director of the Canadian TRIUMF laboratory.
With this first test, the intention of the scientists would be to see if the largest particle accelerator in the world works properly. The first proton collisions will occur after a few months , and that is when the birth of the Universe would be recreated and data began to be obtained. Scientists have since used the LHC as the reason the universe prefers matter to antimatter .
Years after its launch, in 2012, the LHC made possible one of the most important discoveries of the 21st century: the existence of the Higgs boson, an essential subatomic particle that allows us to understand how particles obtain mass. The LHC, with its four main experiments (LHCb, CMS, ALICE and ATLAS), will make it possible to advance in the knowledge of the composition of matter and the Universe.
