The European Centre for Particle Physics started in 1954. It is the world's largest centre for the study of particle physics which attempts to explain the fundamental forces that formed the universe and which hold matter together.
The huge CERN complex near Geneva employs almost 3,000 people but another 6,500 scientists, half the world's particle physicists from 80 countries, come to do research.
CERN's high-speed accelerators use powerful magnetic fields to bring atoms and parts of atoms up to the speed of light. The largest accelerator is 27 km around and particles can lap it 11,000 times a second.
These particles are smashed into targets, generating huge amounts of energy. It allows scientists to understand the forces holding matter so tightly together, to recreate the energies released at the Big Bang and to understand the structure of matter.
The devices used to accomplish this work are enormous. CERN has the largest magnet in the world which weighs more than the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It collects data using detectors the size of four-storey houses.
It also generates vast amounts of data which it seeks to distribute to its member countries. A CERN computer scientist, Tim Berners-Lee, invented the world wide web in 1990 so data produced at CERN could be made instantly available to member state scientists. The HTTP protocol became the basis for the services we now access over the internet.
CERN is also central to the development of the next generation of internet technology. Known as the Grid, this new protocol now under development will support the movement of "petabytes" (a million gigabytes) between distributed users.
Ireland is the only EU state that is not a member of CERN. Our lack of membership means we cannot send our own young researchers to participate in the scientific studies underway at CERN. It also means that Irish companies generally cannot bid for supply contracts at CERN worth more than £230 million a year.