What if you could build a machine that recreates the very beginning of the universe?

The Day CERN Turned On the World's Biggest Machine!

Scientists flipped the switch on a 17-mile underground racetrack for tiny particles

Scientists turned on a 17-mile underground particle smasher to unlock universe secrets!

On September 10, 2008, scientists did something AMAZING — but just two days later, on September 12, they were already making history! The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN had successfully sent its first beam of particles all the way around its massive underground tunnel!

Picture this: a circular tunnel buried deep underground, stretching 17 miles around — that's longer than 300 football fields placed end to end! This incredible machine sits beneath the border of France and Switzerland, and it's the biggest, most powerful science experiment ever built by humans.

But wait — what does it actually DO? Well, imagine taking tiny particles called protons (they're so small you'd need a super-mega-ultra microscope to see them) and zooming them around this tunnel at nearly the speed of light. That's 670 MILLION miles per hour! Then — SMASH! — scientists crash them into each other to see what happens.

Why would anyone want to do that? Because when these teeny particles collide, they create conditions similar to what happened right after the Big Bang! Scientists can discover brand-new particles and learn secrets about how our entire universe works.

💡 The LHC is so cold inside that it's actually colder than outer space — nearly -460°F!