Ten years after the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire in France (CERN) discovered the Higgs Boson God particle, their Large Hadron Collider (LHC) started smashing protons together at unprecedented energy levels. Their quest is to reveal more secrets about how the universe works.

The world's largest and most powerful particle collider occupies a circular underground tunnel of nearly 17 miles along the Swiss-French border. The collider, which is buried 574 feet underground and features 145,000 miles of cable, was started back up in April 2022 after a three-year break for upgrades in preparation for its third run. On July 5th, CERN started a brand new experiment, whereupon the LHC started running around the clock collecting data. The data collection effort will continue for the next four years at a record energy of 13.6 trillion electronvolts  (TeV) — slightly higher than in Run 2, which reached 13 TeV. CERN will then stop again for three years and fire up once more in 2029. The LHC has cost $9.2 billion to build so far.

The process works by activating two beams of protons—particles in the nucleus of an atom— that travel in opposite directions at 99 percent the speed of light around the 60-mile ring. The resulting particle collisions will be recorded and analyzed by thousands of scientists as part of a raft of experiments, including ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHCb, which will use the enhanced power to probe dark matter, dark energy, and "other fundamental mysteries."