While it slept, we were allowed into the tunnels.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) had shut down for two years to upgrade following the discovery of the Higgs boson. In the main ring, 175 m underground, chunks had been cut out of the snaking tubes for essential maintenance. These tubes fire protons in opposite directions, whipping them ever faster until they almost reach the speed of light. Along the 27 km run are four ‘experiments’: vast machines envelop the points at which tubes intersect and particles collide to capture the results. The largest of these, ATLAS, is the size of a six-storey building.
- See more at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/firing-up-the-proton-smasher#sthash.VSSbqYWW.dpuf