The world's biggest scientific instrument

22 October 1997 

The world's biggest scientific instrument Display the high resolution version

The Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP) resides in a tunnel that forms a ring 27 km in circumference beneath the countryside just north of Geneva, Switzerland. The machine, at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, CERN, brings beams of matter (electrons) and antimatter (positrons) to meet head-on in collisions that echo the energies of the early Universe. LEP has 3368 electromagnets - a few are seen here - to guide the beams as they travel in opposite directions around the ring at close to the speed of light.

(The LEP collider was shut down to make way for a new machine, the LHC, in November 2000.)

Credit: CERN Photo

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