The Large Hadron Collider, A Megascience Project

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be the next particle accelerator built to serve the world's high-energy physics community at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. Reusing the 26.7-km circumference tunnel and infrastructure of the existing LEP collider, the LHC will make use of advanced technology - high-field superconducting magnets operated in superfluid helium - to push the energy frontier up by an order of magnitude, while remaining economically feasible. The LHC demonstrates on a grand scale several typical features of megascience projects, such as the need for international funding, world-wide co-operation and integration in the local environment, which we review in the following.