Take a 360-degree tour of ATLAS, one of two general-purpose detectors at the Large Hadron Collider and the largest particle detector by volume ever built. (VR device-compatible)

Watch an animated visualization of how the Large Hadron Collider works, including how particles are accelerated through a series of machines before colliding and how collision data is collected and distributed around the world.

Each year, the Large Hadron Collider undergoes a winter shutdown—when electricity costs are highest—and bringing it back online requires weeks of tests, including some involving high-energy particles from outer space.

Learn about five of the largest particle accelerators on Earth, which, as of 2026, are led by the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Unlike the other major detectors at the Large Hadron Collider, the Compact Muon Solenoid—one of two general-purpose detectors—was built above ground and then lowered underground in sections for reassembly.

The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid—a distributed system of 2 billion gigabytes of storage across over 40 countries—manages data produced by the Large Hadron Collider.

The Large Hadron Collider is the world's largest cryogenic system, which uses 10,000 metric tons of liquid nitrogen and 120 metric tons of helium to cool 36,000 metric tons of magnets to temperatures colder than outer space.

The Large Hadron Collider repurposed an excavation tunnel built for the Large Electron-Positron Collider, which was used until 2000 and whose construction involved the largest civil engineering project in Europe before the Channel Tunnel.

CERN—the European Organization for Nuclear Research—is the world's largest particle physics laboratory, with the Large Hadron Collider serving as its largest tool.

The total length of superconducting wire at the Large Hadron Collider spans about 250,000 kilometers (155,000 miles)—enough to wrap around the equator 6.2 times.

At the CERN Control Center, where the Large Hadron Collider and connected accelerators are managed, champagne bottles from parties commemorating major milestones, such as the first collisions or a new record energy, are collected.

As of 2026, 75 of the 86 particles discovered by the Large Hadron Collider have been found by the LHCb experiment—a detector that explores the decay of particles made of beauty and charm quarks.

A facility at CERN is dedicated to creating and analyzing anti-hydrogen

Dubbed the "antimatter factory," the site was built to study the properties of dark matter and identify any inconsistencies with existing particle physics models. Antimatter particles have the same mass as normal matter, but opposite charge and other quantum properties.

Explore the components of the linear particle accelerator at Los Alamos

Located at the site of bomb design and development for the Manhattan Project, LANSCE features an injector system for hydrogen ions, a series of tanks with alternating electric fields for proton acceleration, and an isotope production facility that creates radioisotopes for medical treatments.

The next generation of gravitational wave detectors may include a triangular design

The Einstein Telescope will use three pairs of underground detectors—each with arms separated by 60 degrees—arranged in an equilateral triangle. The European observatory will work alongside the Cosmic Explorer, a pair of new US detectors, to provide an eightfold increase in sensitivity over LIGO and extend the current detection frequency range.

The Louvre in Paris has its own particle accelerator for art analysis

The Accélérateur Grand Louvre d'analyse élémentaire serves as a noninvasive tool for identifying and quantifying trace elements present in artworks by analyzing how particles backscatter off targets. This information can help detect forgeries and determine a piece's provenance. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

See how CES comes to life with a massive setup across Las Vegas

This behind-the-scenes video shows crews assembling the sprawling CES show—filling more than 2.5 million square feet of exhibition space with booths, lights, and tech from around the world ahead of the event’s opening.

Particle accelerators have been used to reveal detailed ant anatomy

Using a synchrotron facility at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, a pair of X-ray beams swept across about 2,200 ant specimens to create over 200 terabytes of projection images from multiple angles. The images were compiled into micrometer-resolution 3D reconstructions of 792 species, which are freely accessible on the Antscan platform.

Particle detection has evolved from cloud and bubble chambers to digital 3D displays

As invisible particles passed through cloud and bubble chambers, they disrupted supersaturated vapor and superheated liquid, respectively, creating trails that served as proxies for cosmic rays. The transition from photographed events to digital sensors enhanced data collection and accuracy.

Take a 360-degree tour of a Google data center

As of 2025, scientific evidence strongly supports 3I/ATLAS being a comet

Claims of alien technology would require the celestial object to transmit measurable technological signals, which were not detected by the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope. Previous telescope observations identified that 3I/ATLAS's chemical composition, structure, and orbital characteristics are consistent with those of an interstellar comet.

Explore all the particles that make up the Standard Model

This interactive organizes all the particles of matter and force in the Standard Model alongside the Higgs boson. Clicking on any particle will display a brief description and several properties, such as discovery year, mass, and charge.

The NSF funded the design and construction of LIGO by MIT and Caltech

The 1992 Cooperative Agreement between the National Science Foundation and both research institutions came twelve years after funding 1.5-meter (4.9-foot) and 40-meter (131-foot) prototypes. With a 1992 budget of $395M, LIGO was once one of the largest NSF-funded projects in history

Take a virtual tour of the International Space Station

The ISS is the largest human-made object in space. Its modules were meticulously connected by robotic arms and astronauts during slow, careful spacewalks, creating a structure with over eight miles of electrical wire.

The European Space Agency's Euclid telescope maps dark matter

As light rays travel near massive objects in space, their paths can be distorted on their way to Earth, causing objects to appear displaced, magnified, shrunken, or sheared. By simulating these effects for various mass distributions, astronomers can match the distortion to a simulated mass and compare it with the observed visible matter to infer the presence of dark matter.

View the winners of the 2025 Global Physics Photowalk contest

Participants were asked to submit entries showcasing particle physics labs from around the world, including particle accelerators, neutrino detectors, and superconducting experiments. The winning photograph was taken at the CryOgenic Laboratory for Detectors, where scientists hunt for dark matter after cooling materials to a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero.

Explore the scale of the universe in this interactive adventure

The sheer enormity of the universe escapes our ability to conceive of its scale, despite the best efforts of human imagination. This interactive provides an intuitive sense of how small we are, from a single astronaut to the Milky Way and beyond.

The containment apparatus at Chernobyl is the world's largest movable metal structure

Completed in 2016, the "New Safe Confinement" is a €1.5B megastructure—the largest movable structure ever built. It was assembled next to the damaged reactor, then rolled into place along a special track to seal the site for at least 100 years.

Biosphere 2 is the largest Earth science experiment ever built

The vivarium—an enclosed system including animals and plants—is sealed from below with 454 metric tons of stainless steel liner and includes an ocean habitat with more than 700,000 gallons of seawater. B2 is visited by 100,000 people yearly, including more than 10,000 K-12 students.

As of 2025, LUX-ZEPLIN is the world's most sensitive dark matter experiment

The experiment is designed to indirectly detect WIMPs—weakly interacting massive particles and a candidate for what dark matter is made of—by looking for light produced when they collide with xenon atoms. Such collisions would also release electrons, which are then manipulated to produce a secondary light signal that helps rule out background effects.

TON 618, the largest black hole ever detected, has the mass of 66 billion suns

The supermassive black hole is 18 billion light-years away and emits radiation with the brightness of 100 trillion stars. It is so massive that light would take an entire week to travel from its edge to its center.

An 800-ton shake table is the world's largest earthquake simulator

After the 1995 Kobe earthquake killed over 6,000 people, Japan created E-Defense to reproduce the force of earthquakes and test them against structures as tall as 10 stories, leading to changes in Japanese building codes to reduce collapse rates.

Explore an interactive map of the unified theories of everything

This interactive concisely describes many highly complex theories ranging from quantum gravity and black holes to dark matter and energy. Supplementary resources, key questions, and possible solutions accompany each description. As of 2026, no developed theory provides an accepted explanation of all observed phenomena in the universe at all scales.

Explore human anatomy with these beautiful images

The Human Organ Atlas offers detailed 3D images of dozens of human organs. It was created with very bright X-rays from a particle accelerator, which is formally called a synchroton imaging method.

View a gallery of stunning images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope

While the James Webb telescope collects an astounding amount of scientific data, a major part of its allure is its ability to return stunning, high-resolution images. These images include nearby stars, distant galaxies, and some of the oldest structures in the universe.

A breakdown of the Detonation Research Test Facility, which features a 500-foot explosion tube

Located at Texas A&M University, DRTF is the largest explosions lab in the world as of 2026 and features a steel-and-concrete structure that scientists use to initiate and track explosions with split-second precision. Among the facility's goals are studying the large industrial explosions, hypersonic flight, and supernovae.

The mass of a cell can be measured using hollow, vibrating beams

In 2010, scientists at MIT constructed a U-shaped device that vibrates like a guitar string with an internal fluid channel. As cells and bacteria pass through the device, its rate of vibration shifts, with greater mass creating larger shifts.

Watch a time-lapse of the construction of a data center

After the external structure of a data center is built, cooling systems are installed, followed by interior offices and other rooms. Before installing racks of servers and other equipment, floors are raised beneath where they will be installed to create space for cold fluid to be pumped into the hardware and to facilitate cable management.

Help scientists at LIGO train AI to resolve glitches in observational data

Volunteers are provided with visual representations of signal abnormalities at various frequencies and tasked with categorizing them based on reference examples. Progressing through the tool unlocks more difficult images and additional features. Categorized images will be used to train machine learning algorithms for automated future classification.

A look inside neutron stars, which are thought to contain nuclear pasta

Simulations show that beneath the outer crust of these objects, the gravitational force is so extreme that atomic nuclei link together into chains of primarily neutrons and some protons called nuclear spaghetti. Deeper in the star, these links combine to form sheets—nuclear lasagna—a quintillion times stronger than steel, making it the strongest material in the universe.

Simulate the impact of an antimatter bomb around the world

Using "Total Annihilator," users can click on a location on the map, select the antimatter mass, and the observation altitude before detonating the bomb. Scrolling through the left sidebar reveals the impacts of the detonation, including the sizes of the resulting fireball and thermal pulse, the spread of ionizing radiation, and the atmospheric effects.

Scientists monitor volcanoes with a suitcase-sized observatory called SKATE

Short for Setup for the Kinematic Acquisition of Explosive Eruptions, the device is left to record heat, sound and visual data while volcanologists remain at a safe distance. The $58,000 tool is the successor to the FAMoUS (Fast Multiparametric Setup) prototype.

Visualize a model of all of time, where our lives span less than the width of a human hair

The massive model was built across a Mojave Desert lake bed using 800 lights spaced just 10 meters apart. Within the model, the entirety of human civilization appears only in the final centimeter.

Watch a tour of a 3D visualization of the Pillars of Creation

Combining observational data from the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes has allowed NASA scientists to create a multiwavelength model of the star-forming region at the heart of the Eagle nebula.

In 1971, a $35 ferret helped clean the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Lacking cleaning robots, Fermilab scientists purchased a ferret named Felicia when metal slivers obstructing accelerated particles were identified. They trained her to run strings through vacuum tubes more than 90 meters long, and cleanser-dipped swabs were then tied to the strings and pulled through to remove the debris.

The high-tech mechanisms of the Roman Colosseum

The Roman Colosseum is one of the most iconic amphitheaters in the world and still partially stands today. Aside from its sheer size, the arena was equipped with some of the most high-tech engineering from the classical world, including sophisticated lifts, a huge retractable awning, and an underground network of tunnels, elevators, and trapdoors.

Watch a tour of a battery manufacturing gigafactory

Inside Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited's facility, China's largest EV battery manufacturer uses slurry mixing, "jelly rolling," electrolyte injection, and other techniques and equipment to transform raw metals such as lithium and magnesium into approximately 2.2 million electrochemical cells daily.

For 'Labyrinth,' the Jim Henson Company erected a 15-foot-tall character named Humongous, the largest puppet the company had ever built.

Explore an optical table to create quantum physics experiments

This interactive teaches users to create quantum experiments through lessons resembling video game levels. Users can also use the virtual lab to visualize landmark quantum experiments like entanglement, teleportation, cryptography, and quantum computing, or create their own experiments with drag-and-drop elements.

A virtual reality experience of Machu Picchu

If you can’t make it to the Andes, this virtual-reality experience—created using 360-degree cameras, and 3D modeling and sound design—is the next best thing. It lets you explore all the site’s major landmarks, including the Sun Temple and the Temple of the Condor, while listening to the sound of the wind whipping through the ruins, birdsong, and audio commentaries from expert guides.

Engineer explains VR at five levels of complexity

While its possible to grab a virtual reality headset and hop into an immersive world with little effort, a significant amount of technical and biological science has gone into creating the effect of a 3D world. This video breaks down the technology in five layers of increasing complexity.