Chips, the Universe and Everything

Last week, Intel took ZDNet UK to the European, Middle East and African launch of its new quad-core chips. As the company is a partner of the CERN European high-energy physics laboratory — and sponsor of its Openlab data processing centre — what better place for the launch than the site of the forthcoming biggest experiment on Earth? This is the Large Hadron Collider, which will whizz particles into each other at close to the speed of light for more than ten years. It's switching on next year, when it'll become out of bounds to rubbernecking journalists — so we nipped in with our camera to document the birth of some very Big Science indeed. Oh, and there were some quad-core chips as well.

In the picture above, the floor at the CERN visitor reception resembles a giant circuit board combined with a Saturday Night Fever disco special. The patterns of multi-coloured light flicker around the circuit seemingly randomly, but they're actually triggered by cosmic rays hitting the laboratories. Although the origin of cosmic rays remains a mystery, they are thought to come from very energetic, very distant events. So at CERN's reception, supernovae explode for your pleasure. Beats a fish tank.