CERN

We are the European Organization for Nuclear Research, but most people know us by our acronym, CERN. Our story begins in a time of healing and hope. In 1954, not long after the end of World War II, a group of scientists and leaders from different European countries came together with a shared vision. They wanted to create a place where science could flourish again and where researchers from nations that were once in conflict could work together in peace. Our primary purpose was, and still is, to unite brilliant minds from across the globe to investigate the fundamental building blocks of the universe. We were established to be a beacon of peaceful scientific collaboration, a way to rebuild European science and share knowledge for the benefit of all humanity.

To explore the smallest things in existence, we need to build some of the largest and most complex machines ever created. You cannot see the universe's tiniest particles with a simple microscope; they are far too small and move incredibly fast. To study them, we design and operate powerful machines called particle accelerators. These incredible tools use thousands of giant, super-cooled magnets to create powerful magnetic fields. These fields guide and accelerate beams of particles, pushing them faster and faster until they are traveling at nearly the speed of light. Once they reach their maximum energy, we steer the beams into a collision, smashing the particles together. In the flash of that collision, we can get a glimpse of the fundamental forces and particles that make up everything around us.

Our largest and most famous accelerator is the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC. It is a scientific instrument of immense scale, housed in a circular tunnel that is 27 kilometers (about 17 miles) in circumference. This entire ring is located deep underground, about 100 meters beneath the surface, and it is so large that it crosses the border between France and Switzerland. Building and operating the LHC is a monumental task that requires the expertise of thousands of engineers and scientists from around the world. Its very existence is a testament to what can be achieved when many nations combine their resources and intellectual power for a shared scientific goal. The LHC is the engine of our discoveries, allowing us to recreate the conditions that existed just moments after the beginning of the universe.

While our main focus has always been on particle physics, our work sometimes leads to discoveries that change the world in completely unexpected ways. In 1989, a computer scientist working with us named Tim Berners-Lee was facing a major challenge. We had thousands of researchers located at universities and laboratories all over the planet, and they all needed a simple and effective way to share their experimental data and documents. To solve this very practical problem, he invented a new system for organizing and linking information. He called it the World Wide Web. It was a revolutionary idea, but its greatest impact came from a decision we made. Instead of keeping this technology for ourselves or selling it, we decided to make it available to everyone for free. This act of generosity allowed the World Wide Web to grow from a tool for scientists into the global, interconnected internet that we all use every day for learning, communication, and entertainment.

Our most celebrated discovery came on a historic day: July 4th, 2012. For decades, physicists had been working with a powerful theory called the Standard Model of particle physics. You can think of the Standard Model as a detailed instruction manual for the universe, explaining all the known fundamental particles and the forces that govern how they interact. However, the theory had a missing piece. It predicted the existence of a special particle that gives other fundamental particles their mass, but no one had ever been able to find it. After years of experiments and analyzing enormous amounts of data from collisions in the Large Hadron Collider, scientists working with us were finally able to announce that they had confirmed the existence of this particle: the Higgs boson. Finding it was a monumental achievement that completed the Standard Model and deepened our understanding of the universe's basic structure.

Today, our mission to explore the universe continues. We still operate the Large Hadron Collider, constantly upgrading it to reach higher energies and make more precise measurements. The discovery of the Higgs boson was a major victory, but it also opened the door to even bigger questions. Now, we are searching for answers to some of the universe’s greatest mysteries, such as the nature of dark matter and dark energy, invisible substances that together appear to make up most of the cosmos. Our founding spirit of international collaboration is stronger than ever. We remain a global center for scientific research, where thousands of scientists, engineers, and students from over 100 different countries work together. United by curiosity, we continue to push the boundaries of human knowledge, exploring the fundamental laws of nature for the shared benefit of everyone.