It's not every day you get invited to tour a European particle physics lab, but Google Street View is now extending that offer to global Web users.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, opened its digital doors today, allowing anyone in the world a peek into the laboratories where the future is being discovered.

In 2011, a Google Street View team spent two weeks photographing all of CERN's sites, using, among other devices, a bike-mounted camera system known as the "Street View Trike."

Working in tandem with CERN personnel, the team collected six-sided panoramic images of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) tunnel and the rest of the labs, generating a total 6,000 points that were later coordinated with GPS locations to create the virtual tour.

Four specific experiments were also documented, including the 772-ton ATLAS detector (pictured), which is part of the probe system searching for the Higgs boson particle. Arm-chair tourists can also virtually check out heavy-ion detector ALICE  a piece of the LHC ring designed to study the physics of strongly interacting matter at extreme energy densities.

Don't miss the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), a general-purpose detector at the LHC designed to investigate the Higgs boson, extra dimensions, and dark matter.

The Switzerland-based organization  also the birthplace of the World Wide Web  made headlines in April when the laboratory announced that scientists working on the Antihydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus (Alpha) experiment at the LHC intend to determine if anti-gravity really exists.

In June, Google's online Street View gallery added 1,001 new destinations to its mapping program, continuing its expansion in August by launching in Peru and various zoos around the globe. Earlier this month, the Galapagos Islands made its Street View debut with 360-degree images from the isolated volcanic islands.

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