Update July 4: CERN announced that it detected a Higgs-like particle around 130 TeV. Groundbreaking stuff.Update July 25: See our new documentary about the American hunt for the Higgs, and the giant accelerator outside of Chicago that the LHC made obsolete.Tomorrow, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is set to announce some of the most highly-anticipated findings in recent memory: evidence of the existence of the Higgs boson. Now, we won’t know for sure until then what exactly CERN’s results entail, but it looks like the God particle itself has not yet been observed, to the extent that it can be observed. Still, the coming presentation has got physicists and big bang enthusiasts frothing at the mouth, even if CERN decided to schedule the announcement on America’s (and thus Fermilab’s) day. (Yes, we’re only kidding.)As we prepare to rightfully laud the researchers who pored over mountains of data to pull out the smallest meaningful blips imaginable, it’s also important that we acknowledge the stunning tech that helped make it all happen. And thus we have the Large Hadron Collider, the $9 billion, 17-mile-diameter particle accelerator that sprawls over the Swiss-French border. It’s the most powerful atom smasher on Earth, and was built largely with the intent of finding the Higgs, which would complete the Standard Model and help explain how matter itself exists in the first place.In 2011, Motherboard received an invite from CERN to visit the LHC, and we obviously couldn’t pass it up. The finicky LHC had already been online for a year — off and on — and was mired in controversy, notably from folks who argued that the LHC’s prodigious atom-destroying abilities might open up mini black holes, which would basically end up destroying the Earth. It made for quite a weird backstory to the tour, but a year on that scenario has yet to happen. Yet.In any case, the LHC is one of the most incredible technological marvels humans have ever produced, whose underground bunker is the first real, physical thing I’ve seen that could rival Akira’s storage compound. It’s a beautiful machine, and while it’s easy to be hyperbolic with these things (cue the “God (particle) has been found!” headlines later this week), it’s no exaggeration to say that the LHC is awesome in the truest meaning of the word.Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @derektmead.
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