Sunshine Recorder

The Fantastic Machine that Found the Higgs Boson: On July 4, scientists working with data from ongoing experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) announced the discovery of a new particle “consistent with” the Higgs boson — a subatomic particle also colloquially referred to as the “God particle.” After years of design and construction, the LHC first sent protons around its 27 kilometer (17 mile) underground tunnel in 2008. Four years later, the LHC’s role in the discovery of the Higgs boson provides a final missing piece for the Standard Model of Particle Physics — a piece that may explain how otherwise massless subatomic particles can acquire mass. Gathered here are images from the construction of the massive $4-billion-dollar machine that allowed us peer so closely into the subatomic world. [34 photos]