What is LHC ?

The CERN Fire and Rescue remit covers 40km of underground tunnels, radiation and chemical risks as well as the buildings above ground. CERN firemen train in abseiling and rope rescue techniques in preparation for a tunnel emergency.

X-ray and radiopharmaceutical techniques in medical imaging were developed by particle physicists, as was radiotherapy for cancer patients.

Particle accelerators are used to dry the paint on soft drinks cans.

The combined strands of the superconducting cable being produced for the LHC would go around the equator 6.8 times. If you added all the filaments of the strands together they would stretch to the sun and back 5 times with enough left over for a few trips to the moon.

Part of the LHC will be the world's largest fridge. It could hold 150 000 fridge full of sausages at a temperature colder than deep outer space.

The vacuum in the LHC is comparable to outer space, if it were a car tyre with a leak, there are so few gas molecules that it would take 10 000 years to go flat.

The ATLAS cavern could hold the nave of Notre Dam cathedral.

When the 27km long circular tunnel at CERN was excavated, between lake Geneva and the Jura mountain range, the two ends met up with just one centimetre of error.

LEP was sensitive to the departure of the TGV from Geneva train station, DC current feeds the tracks but the ground return is not good.

The LEP electrical earthing network is a better conductor and so some of the train current returned back through the LEP vacuum chamber.

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN could be the most ambitious scientific undertaking ever.

The results of LHC experiments will probably change our fundamental knowledge of the universe.

CERN is the world's largest laboratory dedicated to the pursuit of fundamental science.

Many of the parts for the ATLAS detector of the LHC were manufactured using the expertise of ex-arms scientists and factories, through collaboration with the International Science and Technology Centre.

If the Higgs boson exists the LHC will be able to make this particle detectable. Confirming or contradicting the first evidence of the Higgs particle is an exciting prospect!

The Nobel prize in physics has twice been awarded to scientists whose experiments were conducted at CERN. The laboratory also boasts several additional Nobel Laureates among its physicists.

On 1st October 2003 CERN and the California Institute of Technology set a new Internet Land Speed Record by transferring 1.1 terabytes of data in less than 30 minutes across 7000km of network.

The equivalent of transferring a full length DVD movie in 7 seconds.

In 1984 CERN translator, Francois Siohan, entered the French Guinness Book of Records for cycling up hill.

Between 6:15am and 7:15pm on 1st July, he climbed 8848m, the equivalent to Mount Everest, by cycling 13 times from Gex to La Faucille in the Jura mountain range.

In the 1960's CERN's main data network was the famous bicycle on line. Tapes of data were loaded into a basket on the bike and then rushed over to the computer centre.

The Grid is a service for sharing computer power and data storage capability over the Internet. Its ultimate aim is to turn the global network of computers into one vast computational resource.

Verification of the theory that explains why the sun shines - the weak force - is one of CERN's biggest achievements.

The discovery of the neutral current was announced at CERN in 1973. The theory was finally confirmed in 1983 with the direct observation of W and Z particles.

Since 1962, 38 heads of state have visited CERN.