What is the Largest Machine in the World?
The largest machine in the world is the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland. It has a circumference of 27 km (17 mi). If the Superconducting Super Collider in Waxahachie, Texas, hadn’t been canceled in 1993, that would be the world’s largest machine, as it had a planned circumference of 87.1 km (54 mi). The Large Hadron Collider is capable of accelerating protons or heavy ions up to 99.9999991% the speed of light, achieving a collision energy of 14 TeV (tera-electron-volts). 14 TeV is about 14 times the energy of a flying mosquito, but packed into a single proton, which is about 1021, or ten trillion billion times less massive than a mosquito. Despite their very large size, the Large Hadron Collider and other huge particle accelerators are essentially one-dimensional, running around in a relatively thin loop. The largest machine that has a length, width, and height with similar values is the Overburden Conveyor Bridge F60 in Lichterfeld, Germany. This
