Dictionary

The most important experimental technique of particle physics: accelerating electrically charged particles with the help of electric forces, make them collide with each other and, from the result of the collision, draw conclusions about the properties of elementary particles and their interactions.

It is an intriguing possibility, suggested by models based on the ideas of string theory, that particle accelerators such as the LHC might actually produce miniature black holes (for more about this, see the spotlight text Particle accelerators as black hole factories?).