A proton beam completed its first journey around the world’s largest particle accelerator, beginning an experiment built to probe some of the deepest questions about matter and the universe.
THE UNIVERSAL RECORD
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Brad Socha | September 9, 2026 | 4:53 AM EST
Featured image: The Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Photo: CERN.
On September 10, 2008, scientists at CERN successfully guided a proton beam around the full 27-kilometre ring of the Collider for the first time.
At 10:28 a.m. local time, the beam completed its first circuit of the Large Hadron Collider, an enormous scientific instrument buried beneath the French-Swiss border near Geneva.
The moment represented the culmination of more than two decades of planning and construction. CERN described it that morning as the beginning of a new era of scientific discovery.
Four years later, experiments operating at the Large Hadron Collider would help reveal one of the most important discoveries in modern physics: a new particle consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson.
Yet when the machine first came to life in 2008, some of the world’s attention was focused on something very different.
Could the LHC destroy the Earth?
The question generated extraordinary headlines, particularly over speculation that particle collisions might create microscopic black holes. Scientists had already examined those scenarios and concluded that the machine posed no such threat.
Behind the fears was a far more remarkable story: humanity had constructed a machine capable of recreating conditions that could help physicists investigate the fundamental structure of the universe.
Inside the World’s Largest Collider
The Large Hadron Collider is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
Its 27-kilometre ring contains superconducting magnets and accelerating structures designed to guide beams of particles travelling at nearly the speed of light. The accelerator lies underground, reaching depths of roughly 100 metres in places.
Rather than observing the universe only through telescopes, the LHC allows physicists to investigate matter by accelerating particles in opposite directions and bringing them into collision.
Detectors positioned around the accelerator record what emerges from those collisions.
Among the largest experiments are ATLAS and CMS, massive general-purpose detectors designed to investigate a wide range of questions in particle physics.
But September 10, 2008, was not yet about producing the high-energy collisions that would eventually transform physics.
First, scientists had to demonstrate that they could successfully steer a beam around the machine.
The first proton beam completed the entire ring in less than an hour after the commissioning process began. Later that day, a beam travelling in the opposite direction was also successfully circulated.
It was an extraordinary technical achievement.
It was also followed almost immediately by a serious setback.
Nine days later, an electrical fault between two magnets caused mechanical damage and a major helium leak. Repairs kept the LHC from returning to operation until 2009, and its high-energy collision programme began in 2010.
The delay did not prevent the machine from eventually fulfilling one of its most anticipated scientific goals.
From Black Hole Fears to the Higgs Boson
Before startup, speculation about the Large Hadron Collider became a global story.
Some critics suggested that its collisions might produce microscopic black holes or other hypothetical phenomena capable of threatening Earth.
CERN responded before the first beam circulated, pointing to detailed scientific safety assessments.
Nature itself provided one of the strongest arguments.
Earth and other astronomical bodies have been struck for billions of years by naturally occurring cosmic rays capable of producing particle collisions at energies comparable to or greater than those investigated at the LHC. If such interactions could trigger catastrophic processes, scientists argued, the consequences should already be observable.
The safety assessment also examined speculative theories that allowed for the production of microscopic black holes. Under those theoretical scenarios, any such objects would decay immediately rather than grow by consuming surrounding matter.
The feared catastrophe never occurred.
Instead, the LHC began producing scientific data.
By 2012, ATLAS and CMS had accumulated evidence of something physicists had pursued for decades.
On July 4, the two collaborations announced the observation of a new particle with a mass around 125–126 gigaelectronvolts. Each experiment had independently reached the statistical threshold traditionally required to claim a particle discovery.
Its characteristics were consistent with the Higgs boson.
Further measurements strengthened that identification, and in 2013 CERN reported that the evidence strongly indicated that the new particle was indeed a type of Higgs boson.
The discovery helped confirm the mechanism associated with the Higgs field, an essential component of the Standard Model of particle physics.
The work was significant enough that François Englert and Peter Higgs received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for the theoretical mechanism they had helped develop decades earlier.
The machine’s mission, however, did not end with the Higgs.
Scientists continue using the Large Hadron Collider to make increasingly precise measurements of known particles while searching for evidence that could reveal physics beyond the Standard Model.
Questions remain about dark matter, the imbalance between matter and antimatter, and other fundamental mysteries that the current model of particle physics cannot fully explain.
That makes September 10, 2008, important for something larger than the successful circulation of a proton beam.
For a few hours that day, television cameras and headlines focused on whether an unprecedented machine would actually work, and, in some corners, whether it should be feared.
What followed demonstrated what the machine had actually been built to do.
Four years after its first beam completed the 27-kilometre journey, the Large Hadron Collider helped reveal a particle physicists had been seeking for nearly half a century.
Its first trip around the ring had been only the beginning.
Sources:
CERN — First Beam in the LHC: Accelerating Science
https://home.cern/first-beam-in-the-lhc-accelerating-science/
CERN — The Large Hadron Collider
https://home.cern/resources/faqs/large-hadron-collider-dangerous
CERN — CERN Reiterates Safety of LHC on Eve of First Beam
https://home.cern/cern-reiterates-safety-of-lhc-on-eve-of-first-beam/
CERN — Incident in LHC Sector 3-4
https://home.cern/incident-in-lhc-sector-3-4/
CERN — CERN Experiments Observe Particle Consistent With Long-Sought Higgs Boson
https://home.cern/cern-experiments-observe-particle-consistent-with-long-sought-higgs-boson/
CERN — The Higgs Boson
https://home.cern/science/physics/higgs-boson/
About the Author
Brad Socha is the founder of The Universal Record, focused on sourced, factual global reporting. Coverage includes international news, geopolitics, technology, and major developments.