In pictures: the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

This image shows a magnetic component of a CMS Detector, one of four huge machines designed to observe the moment sub-atomic particles collide. The idea is to re-create conditions at the point the universe began – the Big Bang.

The LHC was switched on, briefly, in September before an electrical fault led to mechanical damage. In 2007, in the final stages of its construction, James Brittain spent three days photographing the underground facility in the Alps. “The scale of the place is extraordinary,” he said. “The particle accelerator has been driven entirely by function, yet the resulting creation – the components and some of the accidental spaces around it – was extremely beautiful.”