Using a huge gantry crane, custom-built by the Vorspann System Losinger Group, the pre-assembled central piece, containing the magnet and weighing as much as five jumbo jets (1,920t), was gently lowered into place. The entire process took about 10 hours to complete.
A total of 43 manufacturers from Europe alone have supplied lifting gear to CERN, which is located astride the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, not far from the foothills of the Alps (about an hour by car in fact).
Put simply, CERN aims to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang to understand why the universe is like it is today. Over a thousand dipole magnets guide the particles around the 27km ring. Several hundred quadrupole magnets focus the particle beams, squeezing them so that more particles collide when the beams cross.
Using a huge gantry crane, custom-built by the Vorspann System Losinger Group, the pre-assembled central piece, containing the magnet and weighing as much as five jumbo jets (1,920t) was gently lowered into place cern 1
