Testing a magnet for the Large Hadron Collider. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a proposed new accelerator for CERN, the European particle physics laboratory. Two types of magnets are used; one type to bend a beam of particles around the 27-km circumference of the accelerator ring, and the other type to keep the beam focused. The large blue pipe here is a bending magnet. A blue test cable is seen leading into one of the two small beam pipes in the centre of the magnet. The magnets use superconducting wires to create the intense fields required. The components have to be cooled to 1. 8 degrees Kelvin using liquid helium.