The physics machine, called the Large Hadron Collider, is a 17-mile hollow ring underneath Switzerland and France built by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

FORBES: Taking Bets On The Large Hadron Collider

The discovery eventually came about using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a machine at CERN that sends bunches of protons round a ring 27km in circumference, in opposite directions, at close to the speed of light, so that they collide head on.

ECONOMIST: The Higgs boson