CERN (3 facts) - The European Laboratory for Particle Physics (formerly the Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire). Here, the resources of the European member nations are pooled to construct the large particle accelerators needed for high-energy experiments. The major facilities at CERN include the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) and the Large Electron-Positron (LEP) collider.
DESI (3 facts) - The German national laboratory for high-energy physics, located near Hamburg. It is the home of the e+e- storage rings DORIS and PETRA, and the electron-proton machine, HERA.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (4 facts) (Fermilab) - Home of the Tevatron, the world's most powerful accelerator, a p p bar collider with a maximum collision energy of 1.8 Te V (= 1800 Ge V = 1.8 × 1012 eV).
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (4 facts) (SLAC) - It is distinguished by having a 2-mile-long linear accelerator in which electrons and positrons can be accelerated for subsequent injection into storage rings such as PEP, an e+e- collider which was commissioned in 1980. It was in the SPEAR rings at SLAC that the J / ψ meson and the τ lepton were first observed in the mid-1970s. However, the most fascinating of SLAC's facilities is the novel SLC (Stanford Linear Collider), consisting of the old linear accelerator together with two new collider arcs.