Elementary particle physics is the search for the fundamental particles that are the constituents of all matter and radiation in the universe. It is the basis of the Standard Model that unifies electromagnetism with the strong and weak nuclear forces and breaks down all known particles into combinations of six types of quarks, six types of leptons, the antiparticles of each of these, and five bosons (four force bosons and the Higgs boson). The extremely high energies and near-light-speed velocities required for elementary particle physics have led to the development of ever-larger particle accelerators, culminating in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN which is 27 kilometers in circumference; every year the LHC drains 800 gigawatt-hours of electricity and produces tens of petabytes of data.
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