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International collaboration allows UK researchers to access large scale research infrastructures which the UK – or any other country - could not afford to build on its own. The best known example is CERN but there are a great many other examples which RCUK participates in such as the ILL, the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) and the telescopes of the European Southern Observatory, all of which are based on multilateral collaboration, and often intergovernmental, agreements.
The UK is one of the biggest contributors to the Large Hadron Collider, supplying hardware, computing and scientific expertise to the project. STFC invested more that £500 million over the thirteen year construction period in funding the UK membership of CERN and supporting researchers from 20 UK institutions, who helped build the LHC’s four detectors.
The LHC is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built and will help scientists answer questions about how the universe began. It will circulate two beams of protons, close to the speed of light, around a 27 kilometre underground accelerator. These conditions give researchers information about how the Universe began, how nature works and will resolve some important mysteries – from the existence of extra dimensions to dark matter.