CERN: Top five quotes

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is one of the world's largest and most respected scientific research centers - and it turns 60 years old on Monday (29.09.2014).

Scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, have been smashing together particles to get at the core of what makes up matter.

In March 2013, the elementary Higgs boson particle was discerned through work at the LHC, marking a breakthrough in particle physics.

DW's science desk has put together five quotable quotes on CERN - some come straight from the horse's mouth.

1. We have made the discovery of a new particle - a completely new particle - which is most probably very different from all the other particles. It's nearly a once in a lifetime experience, I would say.
- Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director of CERN, on the Higgs boson - or the "God particle" - that binds together the universe as we know it

2. I am quite surprised that it happened during my lifetime. It is nice to be right about something sometimes.
- Peter Higgs on CERN when scientists detected the Higgs boson particle

3. There are still many open questions that need to be answered. We have every possible idea - but the final answer can only come from experimentation. And the only experiments that can provide answers are those taking place at the Large Hadron Collider. Which makes this an exciting moment - we may get new clues from outside the Standard Model to answer the questions we still have.
- Hubert Kroha of the Max Planck Institute for Physics

4. Every day brings new challenges, with new colleagues. You're constantly getting to know people from universities all over the world. They come with new ideas and detectors, and we try to integrate them.
- Daniel Adam Dobos of CERN on particle sensors in the Large Hadron Collider

5. The LHC accelerates
the protons and the lead,
and the things that it discovers
will rock you in the head.
- Katherine McAlpine in her Large Hadron Collider Rap