12-09-2013 ScienceTechnology Inside CERN's $10 b

"So watch where you step," physicist Joe Incandela said as we descended in an elevator 27 stories below the surface of the Earth.

In the event of a fire, take the elevator back up, he said -- a rule opposite from anywhere else. We also wore orange hard hats for the subterranean journey. You know, just in case.

From the cornfield beside the CMS buildings, against an idyllic mountain backdrop, you might not guess this is an entry point into the collider, the world's largest science experiment. The quiet winding roads through the French village of Cessy contrast with the subatomic violence of the particle accelerator below, which sends millions of protons smashing against each other every second.

We were able to go underground here thanks to a seven-year excavation of almost 250,000 cubic meters of soil and rock, a process that also uncovered a Roman villa nearby. That all led to the construction of a modern beige office complex on the surface, above the complicated particle detector that's waiting for us below.

CMS -- which stands for Compact Muon Solenoid -- sits along a 17-mile circular tunnel straddling the French-Swiss border. On the opposite side of the ring, in Switzerland, is ATLAS, another important experiment. Both projects are operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the physics laboratory that hosts the collider.

CMS and ATLAS share the same scientific goals -- finding new particles and properties of the universe -- but their architecture and technical systems are different. Fabiola Gianotti, former spokeswoman for ATLAS, said there's a healthy competition between the groups that pushes both to do their best.

"I think we would not have produced so many beautiful results so quickly if this 'friendly competition' was not there," she said. What is the Higgs boson and why is it important?

A $10 billion search for answers

The Higgs boson is a particle whose existence was confirmed at the Large Hadron Collider by both ATLAS and CMS in 2012. This year's Nobel Prize in Physics will be awarded to Francois Englert and Peter Higgs on Tuesday for their theories about this particle.

A simplified refresher on the idea: Throughout empty space is a phenomenon called the Higgs field, which is all around us. If this field gets excited, a tiny component will break off -- and that is the Higgs boson. This concept helps solve a fundamental question about the universe: Why does matter have mass?