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The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is one of the most important places in the world for scientific discovery.

The facility that straddles the Franco-Swiss border is the birthplace of the World Wide Web, and its newest facility, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is currently the epicentre of the search for the elusive Higgs Boson particle.

If scientists managed to discover the Higgs Boson, it would confirm the Standard Model of particle physics, which lists the fundamental particles that make up the universe and the relationship between them.

CERN scientists are searching for the Higgs Boson using a huge super computer which could itself play a key role in history - many experts believe the machine could inspire a new generation of personal super-computers over the next decade.

Despite this huge significance, CERN could soon be badly hit by funding cuts at European Commission level, as revealed in a previous article by IBTimes UK.

This slideshow highlights the achievements of CERN, in particular its current pride and joy, the LHC.