NASA's New Horizons spacecraft returned images, such as this one, to improve maps of different regions of Pluto. NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI hide caption

This July 16, 1945, photo shows the mushroom cloud of the first atomic explosion at Trinity Test Site, New Mexico. AP hide caption

Smart phones contain a silicon chip inside the camera that might be used to detect rare, high energy particles from outer space. J. Yang/Courtesy of WIPAC hide caption

Part of the Large Hadron Collider. iStockphoto hide caption

A view of the Large Hadron Collider in its tunnel at CERN in Switzerland. Martial Trezzini/AP hide caption

The Large Hadron Collider's ATLAS detector under construction in 2005. ATLAS is one of the tools physicists are using to try and understand how the universe works. Maximilien Brice/CERN hide caption

High-energy physics in action: an image of an event in CERN's CMS detector during the search for the Higgs boson. CERN hide caption

A visualization of proton-proton collision events recorded by the Large Hadron Collider's (LHC) Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

Big science in orbit: the Hubble Space Telescope NASA hide caption

One way we make sense of the cosmos is to study what's in it, objects like this brown dwarf (artist's impression) observed by the ESO's ALMA project. Another way is to watch what happens when tiny particles are smashed together in "labs" such as the LHC at CERN. M. Kornmesser/ALMA/ESO/NAOJ/NRAO hide caption

The Universe of Particles exhibition at CERN in 2011. Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images hide caption