A Quick Look Around The LHC: Transcription
INT. Large HAdron Collider Complex - day
Our character is at the back of a tour group being shown round the complex. He looks bored.
Suddenly a bunch of smartly dressed astronaut type characters catch his attention. They are heading for a lift.
Intrigued, he follows them and ends up getting into the lift as well.
At the bottom of the lift they arrive in a pristine metal tube with glass sides. The lift door slams shut and seems to seal itself.
A voice speaks to them out of the semi-darkness.
VOICE
Welcome aboard the Large Hadron Collider. Your journey today will take you 14 billion years back in time to a moment just fractions of a second after the big bang.
Our character looks worried. He tries to talk to one of the other characters but they are all intent on listening to the voice.
VOICE (CONT'D)
A moment when many young protons like yourselves were whizzing around full of energy, colliding with each other and helping to create the universe as we know it now. Some of you will be involved in such collisions today.
Our character mouths 'What?' He runs back to where the lift was and searches for a button might open it. When he can't find one he starts banging on the door.
VOICE (CONT'D)
And I regret to say that some of you won't make it home.
This just makes our character even more panicked. He starts banging on the glass at the front of the tube but nobody on the other side can hear him. He notices an old lady from his tour who is standing close to the glass - knitting.
VOICE (CONT'D)
The whole world, appreciates the sacrifice you are making to push back the frontiers of science. And, who knows, some lucky one amongst you may have a brief existence as an exotic particle.
There is the sound of some canned applause.
Our character scribbles something on a scrap of paper and holds it up to the glass - 'There has been a terrible mistake!!!' The old lady doesn't look up from her knitting.
There is a humming sound as the machine warms up. Our character scribbles another sign - 'I'm on the tour'. He bangs on the glass and the old lady looks up from her knitting just in time to see our character disappear in a flash as he is sucked down the tube.
INT. TUBE - night
Our character flies down a straight tube with the protons. The protons all look calm and focused. Our character is screaming.
The voice starts up again.
VOICE
We are currently travelling at approximately 0.314 the speed of light or 211 million miles per hour and are accelerating towards the booster tubes and Synchrotron circles. Hold onto your lunch.
Gauges at the bottom of the screen show: LINAC2 - 0.314902 c - 50 MeV
They shoot round one of four small booster tubes. Our character is sick everywhere.
Gauges show: Booster - 0.915992 c - 1.4 GeV
They shoot round a larger circle. Our character is upside down.
Gauges show: Proton Synchrotron - 0.999346 c - 25 GeV
A larger circle again. Our character is upside down and back to front.
Gauges show: Super Proton Synchrotron - 0.999998 c - 450 GeV
VOICE (CONT'D)
And onto the big circle itself.
Our character is the right way up but looks like he could be sick again any minute.
VOICE (CONT'D)
Twenty-seven kilometres of engineering miracle. You are surrounded by some of the biggest and coldest magnets on this Earth.
Our character tries to look around and spots his tour group gazing through a viewing window.
Next time round he tries to grab the window before shooting on. Nobody notices.
VOICE (CONT'D)
Don't worry if you are starting to feel a little heavy. By the end of the trip you will be 7,000 times you original mass.
Our character looks like he has swallowed a cannonball.
VOICE (CONT'D)
They are now bending the beams. Remember there will be a full debrief later for those of you that make it. We are looking for Higgs Boson Particles, tiny black holes, dark matter or anything else a little unusual which might help prove one theory or another. Good luck every one. Collision in 3,2,1…
Our character yells. Big explosion.
In an extreme slow-motion sequence our character collides with a proton travelling in the opposite direction.
Other collisions happen all around him. Next to him a Higgs Boson particle is briefly formed before transforming into two photons.
Along with many other particles, our character passes though the tube he has been travelling along and into the vast chamber of the ATLAS detector.
The detector tracks the path of the particles as they crash (or fail to crash) through four layers of silicon (labelled Made in Oxford).
Our character bangs his head on all of the layers then splats into a calorimeter. He slides down to a trolley, unconscious.
The trolley trundles down a corridor. Another trolley bumps into it and our character falls off and rolls into a lift. The lift doors close.
When the lift doors open again a bunch of astronaut characters hurry out. One of them bumps into our character and he rolls out too.
Our character starts to come to and is delighted to find that he seems to be relatively okay.
VOICE (CONT'D)
Welcome aboard the Large Hadron Collider. Your journey today is going to take you 14 billion years back in time...
Our character realises where he is and lets out a very loud yell.
