“Turning on” the machine was a lot more complex than flicking a switch.
Atoms of hydrogen housed in a bottle no bigger than a fire extinguisher were first stripped of their electrons to reveal naked protons.
These particles then had to be fired through a succession of smaller accelerators before they were travelling at sufficient speed to be injected into the LHC.
It was a process that required unimaginable levels of precision with timing accurate to within a fraction of a nanosecond.
