Lords of the Ring

"When they send it over here," Jon continues, "all the bits have got to slot into each other. And then it slots into an even bigger detector that's been built by someone else in Germany. And then that slots into an even bigger one. There are bits being built in Manchester, bits being built in Liverpool, quite a lot being built in Geneva and the US as well. It's kind of an onion affair - and we're at about layer two of the onion."

Maurice Goodrick Photo-montage captures the complexity of the ATLAS detector

Over seven thousand scientists are working at CERN: the "fellowship of the ring" is made up of representatives from 80 countries. This international collaboration goes back over 50 years, to the foundation of CERN.

At a time when the world seems divided and full of conflict, I found it inspiring to be in a place where scientists from all political, religious and cultural backgrounds have come together to make this machine work. But what motivates them? According to Jon, it's the sheer lust for data: "Everyone wants to know everything. It's not like one person wants to know one thing about a collision and another wants to know another. Everyone wants to know the whole story."

As well as ensuring that all the pieces of equipment fit together like one big complicated jigsaw puzzle, the philosophy of cooperation extends to the results from the giant machine. "All the data goes to the same place and then everyone who built a little bit of the detector gets all the data from all of it," Jon explains. "And we all share the analysis as well. So it's a real genuine collaboration. It's actually our facility and we all use it. It forces us to talk to each other more than you would normally in a big international lab where you come, do your science and go away again."

Jon and Brian met some 10 years ago, when they were working on rival experiments on a particle accelerator in Hamburg. According to Jon, "Hamburg is a nice place to go to, lots of nice bars so it's a good social life for the physicists out there". I discovered that socialising was also a key element in the approach to physics at CERN, and spent a lot of time eating and drinking with the physicists as they expounded the new science that they hope to crack.

As well as a five-course feast at Le Coq Rouge just across the border in France, and the best steak and chips I've ever had, I had the privilege of dining in the legendary CERN café. It was one of the first buildings to be built on the site. According to Jon, "a lot of the big decisions in particle physics about what to do next, how to find out the things that you don't know were made here."

Although these decisions have enormous implications for how millions of euros of funding are spent and the future of particle physics, Jon echoes a lot of the other scientists I met in saying: "it's better to make them over a coffee or a beer than it is to make them in a boardroom".