The Large Hadron Collider

21 March 1984
A Large Hadron Collider in the LEP Tunnel?

CERN and the European Committee for Future…
Know more
30 January 1987
US president announces support for Superconducting Super Collider

With US President Ronald Reagan’s support,…
Know more
01 October 1992
ATLAS and CMS collaborations publish letters of intent

The Toroidal LHC Apparatus collaboration propose…
Know more
01 March 1993
ALICE collaboration publishes letter of intent

The collaboration for A Large Ion Collider…
Know more
21 October 1993
Superconducting Super Collider project cancelled

Due to concerns linked to rising costs, the US…
Know more
14 April 1994
10-metre magnet prototype achieves 8.73 Tesla

The first prototype bending-magnet for the LHC…
Know more
16 December 1994
LHC construction approved

The CERN council approves the construction of the…
Know more
23 June 1995
Japan admitted as CERN observer state

The CERN Council admits Japan as an observer…
Know more
20 October 1995
LHC Conceptual Design Report published

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project is…
Know more
31 January 1997
CMS and ATLAS experiments approved

Four years after the first technical proposals,…
Know more
14 February 1997
ALICE experiment approved

The CERN research board officially approves…
Know more
15 August 1997
TOTEM collaboration publishes letter of intent

The Total Cross Section, Elastic Scattering…
Know more
19 December 1997
United States admitted as CERN observer state

At the December session of the CERN council,…
Know more
15 February 1998
MoEDAL collaboration publishes letter of intent

The Monopole and Exotics Detector at the LHC…
Know more
10 July 1998
Gallo-Roman ruins discovered at CMS dig site

As construction workers are preparing the work…
Know more
17 September 1998
LHCb experiment approved

LHCb is the fourth experiment approved for the…
Know more
31 May 2002
Final excavation of the ATLAS cavern

A digger removes the final sods of earth from the…
Know more
05 July 2002
Reinforcing the ATLAS cavern floor

Construction workers use a modified cement truck…
Know more
04 June 2003
ATLAS cavern inaugurated

After three years of work, the ATLAS detector…
Know more
05 November 2003
LHCf submits letter of intent

The LHC forward collaboration proposes to build…
Know more
01 February 2005
CMS cavern inaugurated

After six and a half years of work, CERN leaders…
Know more
26 April 2007
Last LHC dipole magnet goes underground

The last superconducting magnet is lowered down…
Know more
29 February 2008
Final large detector piece lowered into ATLAS cavern

A component known as a small wheel is the last…
Know more
23 July 2008
Final large detector piece lowered into CMS cavern

The pixel detector barrel is the last large piece…
Know more
10 September 2008
The LHC starts up

At 10.28am on 10 September 2008 a beam of protons…
Know more
19 September 2008
Incident at the LHC

On 19 September 2008, during powering tests of…
Know more
21 October 2008
Inauguration of the LHC

In line with Japanese tradition, this Daruma doll…
Know more
30 April 2009
Final magnet goes underground after LHC repair

The 53rd and final replacement magnet for the…
Know more
20 November 2009
Beams back in the LHC

From a CERN press release, dated 20 November 2009…
Know more
16 December 2009
The LHC is put into standby mode

On 16 December 2009, the LHC ends its first full…
Know more
28 February 2010
The LHC starts again after a short technical stop

After a short technical stop, beams circulate…
Know more
30 March 2010
First LHC collisions at 7 TeV

ATLAS records collisions at 7 TeV centre-of-mass…
Know more
18 October 2011
LHC proton run for 2011 reaches successful conclusion

On 18 October 2011, the grand total of data…
Know more
13 December 2011
Tantalising hints of the Higgs

In a seminar today the ATLAS and CMS experiments…
Know more
05 April 2012
Record collision energy of 8TeV

(image: event recorded with the CMS detector in…
Know more
04 July 2012
ATLAS and CMS observe a particle consistent with the Higgs boson

On 4 July 2012, as a curtain raiser to the year…
Know more
16 February 2013
End of LHC Run 1: First shutdown begins

On Saturday 16 February at 8.25am the shift crew…
Know more
08 October 2013
François Englert and Peter W. Higgs awarded 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics

François Englert (left) and Peter Higgs at CERN…
Know more
12 December 2014
CERN’s Large Hadron Collider gears up for run 2

Run 2 of the LHC follows a 2-year technical stop…
Know more
13 May 2015
CMS and LHCb experiments reveal decay of the B0s particle into two muon particles

Published in Nature, the CMS and LHCb…
Know more
03 June 2015
LHC experiments back in business at record energy of 13 TeV

From an update on the CERN website: The…
Know more
Magnetic monopoles and dipoles (Image: CERN) (Image: CERN)

10 August 2016
The LHC MoEDAL experiment publishes its first paper on its search for magnetic monopoles

In a paper published by the journal JHEP,…
Know more
As the number of particles produced in proton collisions (the blue lines) increase, the more of these so-called strange hadrons are seen (as shown by the red squares in the graph). (Image: CERN) (Image: CERN)

24 April 2017
ALICE experiment results show novel phenomena in proton collisions

In a paper published in Nature Physics, the…
Know more
06 July 2017
The LHCb experiment is charmed to announce observation of a new particle with two heavy quarks

At the EPS Conference on High Energy Physics in…
Know more