LEP beampipe section

Short section of beampipe from the Large Electron Positron collider (LEP, for short). With its 27-kilometre circumference, LEP was the largest electron-positron accelerator ever built and ran from 1989 to 2000 at CERN. During 11 years of research, LEP's experiments provided a detailed study of the electroweak interaction. Measurements performed at LEP also proved that there are three – and only three – generations of particles of matter. LEP was closed down on 2 November 2000 to make way for the construction of the Large Hadron Collider in the same tunnel.