The Large Hadron Collider. xenotar/iStock

Whoosh!

After three years of maintenance and upgrades, the Large Hadron Collider — one of the most powerful scientific instruments ever built — has whizzed past its own record. In preparation for its third major run of experiments, the particle accelerator has created the most energetic beams of protons ever made by humans. The particles went racing around the 17-mile (27 km) tunnel near Geneva, Switzerland, with an energy of 6.8 trillion electronvolts (TeV).