The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with more than 10,000 scientists and hundreds of universities and laboratories, as well as more than 100 countries. The LHC lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference and as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva. On 4 July 2012, CERN announced the discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC, after a 40-year search for its existence. This photograph shows the interior of a section of the LHC's tunnel (sector 3–4). The collider's dipole magnets are painted in blue to protect them from rust.Photograph credit: Maximilien Brice