The first technical drawings and designs were made 20 years ago, and it took 10 years and 150 people to build it.
But today the European particle physics centre, CERN, inaugurated its new 80-meters long particle accelerator Linac 4.
It will generate negative hydrogen ions at three times the energy of previous accelerators, feeding the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and all other experiments with a particle beam with a doubled intensity.
This will enable a greater number of proton particles collisions, or physics events, to be observed.
In 2012, data produced by smashing proton particles together at the LHC established the existence of a long-suspected new particle, the Higgs Boson.
CERN's scientists say they needed a greater number of collisions to get new data and therefore needed more and more protons to be sent to the LHC.
Hydrogen ions will be fed into the Linac 4, where they will undergo numerous accelerations.
At the end of the accelerator, they will have reached the speed of half the speed of light and will be injected into other accelerators.
Their density and intensity will also be increased, so that the number of particles colliding in the LHC will be increased by a factor of five.
This won't happen, however, before 2025.
Linac 4 will first go through a long testing period and then will be connected to CERN's accelerator complex during the expected technical shut down in 2019-2020.
But the technology at the heart of this accelerator already has applications in the medical and art fields, Linac 4 project leader Maurizio Vretenar said.
The scientists at CERN have worked on a miniaturised type of Linac 4 accelerator for use in treating tumours.
They are also working on a prototype to be used by museums.
This accelerator will be able to analyse paintings to determine their age, the composition of the paint, tell whether they have been restored and even if it they are false.
