The Art of the Supercollider: The Main Attraction, The Supercollider Itself

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Recently, the @steemstem project had possibly one of the most incredible meetups any Steemit meetup might have. A total of 22 of us went to Geneva, Switzerland to visit the CERN Large Hadron Collider where state-of-the-art theoretical physics is becoming experimental physics by smashing billions of particles into each other and gathering massive amounts of information where we are able to learn more about the smallest bits of the world we live in.

The main attraction is the image above or the large hadron collider itself. Because it's taken apart for maintenance, we were able to get a rare view of it's interior as two halves have been pulled apart. This piece alone must be made of millions of individual parts.

While the machine is one of the most technologically advanced pieces of lab equipment in the world, it's also one of the most visually stunning pieces of machinery in the world, and I thought I'd show you the inadvertent artwork of the CERN particle physicists, builders, and engineers. I hope you will both enjoy seeing the rugged beauty of this technology, while also learning about CERN at the same time.

This is an exhibit showing the linear accelerator CERN used in it's particle experiments from 1958-1992. This is in a box in an exhibit room and is probably 4 inches (10 cm) in diameter, by my guess. The current accelerator tubing can almost fit a man inside and runs through entire cities!

Here's the current tubing used for the CERN accelerator with two SteemStem members for scale. What a difference a half century makes. This giant tubing runs in a perfect circle for a total of 17 miles (27 kilometers) in an underground tunnel. The diameter gets smaller and smaller as it gets closer to the large hadron collider you see above wher the particles collide and the magic of particle physics happens.

All images are my own, taken with a Canon Eos

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