7 Monumental Machines That Revolutionized the World—and 1 That Could Shape the Future

From an incredible 17-mile-long particle accelerator to a space observatory as vast as a football field, these seven colossal machines have had a profound influence on how we build, how we explore the cosmos, and how we launch rockets into space. We’ve also included an extra machine: a groundbreaking technological creation that may have an equally significant impact once it’s finished.

1. LARGE HADRON COLLIDER

The Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator situated at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, holds the title of the world’s largest machine. With a circumference of nearly 17 miles, it took around ten years to complete. The LHC’s tubes are a vacuum, where superconducting magnets direct and speed up two particle beams traveling in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light. When these beams collide, scientists use the resulting data to answer some of the most fundamental questions about physics and the laws that govern the universe.

Since its activation in 2008, the LHC has led to numerous groundbreaking discoveries, including the detection of the long-sought Higgs boson particle—also known as the "God" particle—which is key to giving other particles mass. Scientists had been pursuing the Higgs boson for five decades. This discovery provides insight into the early universe’s development, including how particles gained mass after the Big Bang. Efforts are already underway to build the LHC’s successor, which will be three times larger and seven times more powerful.

2. CRAWLER-TRANSPORTER ROCKET MOVERS

Constructed in 1965, NASA’s crawler-transporters are among the largest vehicles ever built, each weighing 2400 tons and consuming 150 gallons of diesel per mile. For comparison, a typical semi-truck averages about 6.5 miles per gallon. Their primary task was to transport the Saturn V rockets—which carried humans to the moon and were 35 stories tall when fully assembled—from the massive Vehicle Assembly Building (the world’s largest single-room structure) to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. The journey, which spanned 4.2 miles, was a slow one, with the transporters moving at just 1 mph to avoid toppling the giant rockets. Without these transporters, rockets couldn’t have made it from the assembly site to the launch pad, let alone take us to the moon.

After the completion of the moon missions, the crawler-transporters were adapted for the Space Shuttle program, transporting shuttles from 1981 to 2003. Since the retirement of the orbiters, these reliable machines have been repurposed once more to carry NASA's new Space Launch System (SLS), which, at 38 stories tall, will become the largest rocket ever built once completed, hopefully within the next few years (though the timeline is uncertain due to budget constraints).

3. NATIONAL IGNITION FACILITY

The National Ignition Facility is so vast that three football fields could fit inside. It houses the largest, most powerful, and most precise laser on Earth and is also the world’s largest optical instrument. Opened in 2009 after nearly a decade of construction, NIF is located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. Its lasers replicate the extreme conditions found at the cores of stars and giant planets, providing insights into these cosmic realms. NIF is also a key player in the pursuit of nuclear fusion, the energy source that powers stars. If scientists can unlock this process, it could provide our planet with limitless clean energy.

4. BERTHA THE TUNNEL BORER

When Seattle decided it was time to replace an aging highway that cut through the city, it enlisted Hitachi Zosen Corporation to create the largest tunnel boring machine in the world for the job. Bertha’s task was unprecedented in modern tunnel construction, as it had to dig through dense, abrasive glacial soil and solid bedrock.

In 2013, Bertha—named in honor of Bertha Knight Landes, Seattle’s first female mayor—was assigned to dig a tunnel large enough to accommodate a four-lane road (a two-lane, double-decker highway). Bertha’s job was to carve through 1.7 miles of rock, but after just 1000 feet, the 57-foot-wide, 6559-ton machine collided with a steel pipe casing, causing significant damage. While many thought Bertha was doomed, Hitachi Zosen carried out an extensive repair operation that lasted a year and a half, and soon, Bertha was back at work.

By April 2017, Bertha had finished its work, and engineers began dismantling the massive machine, with its parts slated for use in future tunnel boring machines. Bertha set a new benchmark for what could be accomplished in urban tunnel construction—but it’s unlikely we’ll see machines much larger than Bertha due to the machine’s immense weight and the amount of soil it could move at once. The tunnel Bertha created is expected to open in 2019.

5. INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

The International Space Station (ISS) is a marvel of engineering, equipped with advanced instrumentation and life-support systems, enabling humans to survive in the harsh environment of low-Earth orbit since November 2, 2000. It remains the largest human-made satellite orbiting Earth. The major components were launched into space over a two-year period, and its construction has continued for over a decade, with astronauts adding modules like the Columbus science laboratory and the Japanese science module. The first module, Zarya, was a compact 41.2 feet by 1 feet, but today the ISS spans 356 feet by 240 feet, roughly the size of a football field. The station now boasts 32,333 cubic feet of pressurized volume, comparable to the area of a Boeing 747 (though much of the space is taken up by equipment). The U.S. solar panels on the ISS are as large as eight basketball courts.

From the ISS, scientists have made significant discoveries, including the effects of prolonged exposure to zero gravity on the human body, the origins of cosmic rays, and how protein crystals can aid in cancer treatment. While NASA expects the latest modules of the ISS to remain operational until the 2030s, the agency may begin transitioning much of its ISS operations—and associated costs—to the private sector by 2025, with an eye on expanding the commercial potential of space [PDF].

6. LIGO GRAVITATIONAL WAVE DETECTOR

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is comprised of four separate facilities—two laboratories and two detectors located 2000 miles apart in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana. The detectors, which took around five years to construct and were inaugurated in 1999, are identical L-shaped vacuum chambers, each about 2.5 miles long, operating in synchrony. The purpose of these machines is to detect gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity in 1915. Gravitational waves were purely theoretical until LIGO made the groundbreaking detection in September 2015. This not only confirmed aspects of general relativity but also opened the door to gravitational wave astronomy. The two detectors are spaced far apart to minimize the risk of false positives; both must detect a gravitational wave before it is further investigated.

7. ANTONOV AN-225 MRIYA PLANE

In response to the U.S. Space Shuttle program, the Russians developed their own reusable winged spacecraft, the Buran, and in the 1980s, they created the AN-225 Mriya to transport it. With a wingspan as wide as the Statue of Liberty, a weight of 640 tons, six engines, and the capacity to lift nearly half a million pounds, the AN-225 remains the largest and heaviest plane ever built. It first took flight in 1988, but following the Buran's single flight in 1990 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the plane was used only sparingly.

The massive AN-225 has sparked new ideas in aerospace development. In 2017, the Airspace Industry Corporation of China struck a deal with Antonov, the AN-225’s manufacturer, to build a fleet of aircraft based on the AN-225 design that would transport commercial satellites and launch them into space. Currently, satellites are typically launched aboard rockets. Meanwhile, Stratolaunch, a company founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is constructing an even wider plane (though not longer) than the Mriya, designed to carry a launch vehicle to low-Earth orbit.

BONUS: 10,000-YEAR CLOCK

A visionary project backed by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, the 10,000-year clock is intended to remind humanity of its long-term influence on Earth. Unlike a traditional clock measuring hours and minutes, the Clock of the Long Now tracks time in years and centuries. It will be located inside a mountain on land owned by Bezos in western Texas, and will tick once every year with a century hand advancing only once every 100 years. The clock’s cuckoo will appear only once every millennium. Construction started in early 2018, and when finished (the timeline is still unknown), it will stand 500 feet tall. The true impact of this clock will only be understood by the people of the 120th century.