The Greatest Machine
type: Dataset
description: One can only look to Egypt's pyramids, the great Hindu temples, or Gothic cathedrals for comparison with the massive scientific project buried deep beneath the frontier of France and Switzerland--but perhaps one should not draw the analogy any further. Still, the scope of what is soon to be revealed will change the way we look at everything in our universe. On September 10, 2008, particle physics made newspapers' front pages: for the first time, beams of protons completed a full circuit of the LHC's (the Large Hadron Collider's) ring, the largest piece of scientific equipment ever built, buried a hundred metres or so under the Franco-Swiss border, in a tunnel 27 kilometres in circumference. It was called the "inauguration," though the event in fact represented only one stage in a long process: apparatus of this complexity could never come into service at a single stroke, like the opening of a bridge at the cutting of a ribbon! Months will still be needed to learn to toaster the machine and calibrate the detectors before the real experiments begin. Can this marvel, the most fantastic machine human hands have ever built, be visited? Unfortunately not, there's no chance of seeing it featured on a tour operator's itinerary. But a final opportunity for seeing the behemoth was afforded in April 2008, when the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) opened its doors to visitors one last time, before beginning to test the kilometres of ultra-sophisticated material installed along the trajectory.
issued: 2026-05-15T07:59:55.461032
language: en
modified: 2026-05-15T07:59:55.461037
contact point: Organization
  fn: CCSD
keyword: cern
keyword: infoeu-reposemanticsarticle
keyword: journal-articles
keyword: lhc
keyword: shshisphilsohumanities-and-social-scienceshistory-philosophy-and-sociology-of-sciences
keyword: synchrotron
landing page: 0033-6041

The Greatest Machine
type: Distribution
format: HTML
issued: 2026-05-15T07:59:55.475069
modified: 2026-05-15T07:59:55.448772
access URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00775642

test_moissonnage_selune
type: Agent