The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is an accelerator that brings protons and ions into head-on collisions at higher energies than ever before. This will allow scientists to penetrate still further into the structure of matter, and recreate the prevailing conditions of the early post-"Big Bang" universe.

The LHC is a remarkably versatile accelerator. It can collide proton beams with energies around 7-on-7 TeV and beam crossing points of unsurpassed brightness, providing the experiments with high interaction rates. It can also collide beams of heavy ions, such as lead, with total collision energy in excess of 1,250 TeV--about thirty times higher than at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) under construction at the Brookhaven Laboratory in the US.

Joint LHC/LEP operation can supply proton-electron collisions with 1.5 TeV energy, some five times higher than presently available at HERA, in Germany's DESY laboratory. The research, technical and educational potential of the LHC and its experiments is enormous.

Collaborators
Worldwide collaborations based at CERN

http://www.cern.ch/LHC/