The Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

• The Hadron Collider is the largest and most powerful particle accelerator ever built. The collider measures 27 kilometers in circumference and is located 100 meters underground.

• Work began on developing the LHC in 1992 when ATLAS and CMS published letters of intent and was not completed until 2008. According to the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), 2,500 individuals worked on developing the design, construction, and operation of the collider, while another 17,500 people from all over the world, comprising of over 12 200 scientists, work together to push the limits of knowledge. These groups of specialists worked together for over ten years in order to successfully develop this facility.

• The advent of the LHC led to the discovery of the Higgs field in July 2012, which was its primary purpose and a landmark achievement in the history of physics. The total cost of achieving this feat was estimated at $13.5 billion, while the cost of physically putting the facility together was placed at $4.75 billion.

• The creation of the LHC was inspired by the works of two men: François Englert and Peter W. Higgs. The two men theorized the possibility of identifying a particle that gives other particles their mass. On 8 October 2013, the two men were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for their work in the field.

Apollo 11

• The Apollo 11 mission eclipses every other achievement known to man due to its sheer size, tenacity, and complexity. Sending humans to space was an almost impossible task at the time, and the Apollo mission was created in 1961 to achieve this very goal.

• The Apollo mission was physically led by a man named Neil Amstrong, but it was backed by over 400,000 staff comprising of several engineers, technicians, and scientists, most of whom worked together for eight years to get Neil Amstrong and his fellow team of astronauts to the moon on July 20, 1969.

• Cohesion, agreement, and collaboration was of crucial importance to the Apollo 11 mission because no other mission had previously achieved anything of its nature, and several modules had to be built from scratch to accommodate the new harsh environment. There was virtually no room for error.

• The mission turned out to be highly successful, with only a significant error encountered in the entire journey, which is the famous error 1202.