LHC Data Tape Fragment

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, located at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Featuring a 27-kilometer ring of superconducting magnets, the LHC accelerates protons to nearly the speed of light and collides them at unprecedented energies. These collisions recreate conditions similar to those just after the Big Bang, allowing scientists to probe the fundamental forces and particles of the universe.

In 2015, the LHC achieved collisions at 13 tera-electronvolts (TeV), leading to groundbreaking discoveries, including key insights into the properties of the Higgs boson.

This section of data tape, created by CERN, contains a record of particle interactions and decay patterns observed during these high-energy collisions. Researchers use this data to explore phenomena such as:

• Quark-gluon plasma

• Dark matter candidates

• Exotic particles predicted by theoretical physics.