CERN eggheads find there's no mystery to the universal appeal of a good feast - Times Online

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Only a person lacking a soul could fail to marvel at the technological mastery and intellectual audacity that have together created, deep beneath the lush meadows of the Franco-Swiss border, the world’s largest sub-atomic rollercoaster.

The Large Hadron Collider, which was officially unveiled yesterday but started work last month, is not merely the most elongated scientific instrument, but an engineering feat of such mind-boggling scale and intricacy that one cannot help wondering whether it was constructed not by the self-effacing geeks who scurry around the site with their dodgy ties and dodgier hairstyles, but by an intergalactic collaboration of Vulcans and Jedis.

The purpose of this 27km (16.7 mile) super-tube is every bit as fantastical as the plot of Star Wars: to replicate the moments after the big bang by colliding two streams of protons at close to the speed of light.

Physicists believe that it may provide insights into the origins of mass and why antimatter has disappeared from view and it may even reveal the elusive Higgs boson, which, when you think about it, makes light sabres seem altogether passé. I could not make up my mind whether to be exhilarated or terrified that the fabric of reality – real reality, not sci-fi reality – is so quiveringly weird.
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    CERN,  Large Hadron Collider + add
  3. credits:
    dankitti collided some large hadrons
dankitti
  • added October 22, 2008

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