What calls my attention is the technology developed for the LHC.
Sure, we can learn why things have weight, we can even learn what's the universe made of, but in the process
we can learn something useful for racing, and that, my friends,
that is what is really relevant about the machine.
Black holes devoring Europe? That's peanuts compared with McLaren losing the championship. Apparently, that’s what would be a major tragedy (judging by the display of emotions in other threads), because losing Switzerland to a cosmic catastrophe would ONLY elliminate Sauber and they’re out of the championship race right now. Fortunately, the machine is not located in Maranello or Woking. Phew.
Now, the LHC managing team have overbudgeted the thingie by 400%. On a side note, it seems they could run the Iraq war and do it as well as the americans, but I digress.
So, to save some money, the LHC uses the LEP tunnel (Large Electron-Positron Collider).
It's
exactly like modern cars running at Monza: the kinetic energy you have is too large for the kinks in the track.
So, where comes the "downforce" needed for following the curves? Take in account that there is no chicane-cutting allowed in this case, I’m afraid.
Proton Synchrotron in yellow, Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) in blue, LEP in red.
Notice the increase in the length of the oval (ehem, I mean, the tunnel). BTW, the SPS is “the pits”: it’s this place where the particles are created, stored and then delivered or injected into the “main track”.
However, you have particles with more energy and they are using the same “San Marinesque” old track. What’s the key?
The key are
the magnets. The SPS used magnets that developed a little under 2 teslas. They were developed during the 60's at the Rutherford Lab in England and used for the first time in the american Tevatron, in 1987.
Nowadays you can find 2 teslas magnets in MR equipment (medical scanners), but the LHC needs four times that strength, or over 8 T, or almost 100,000 times the Earth magnetic field. An MR machine has a couple of magnets, the LHC needs 5,000 of them.
The LHC magnets are over 14 meters long, with an inner diameter of 56 mm (2 inches or so). The coil windings MUST not move, as any inner friction would develop hot spots or "quenches", that would destroy the superconductivity they need to work.
LHC magnets have to be positioned with extreme precision. The black horizontal bar is being used for that positioning.
So, you need
extremely rigid wire that's superconducting. The windings of the magnets are made of
niobium-titanium wire.
AFAIK, almost
all the ni-ti wire in the world is produced at one shop: Wah Chang (Great Development), a company founded in 1918 by K.C. Li, a famous mining engineer, at the tungsten mines in China. Nowadays, the ni-ti wire facility of this company is located in Huntsville, Alabama.
Welding two LHC magnets together. I have no idea what kind of welding equipment is this.
To get beyond the Tevatron, LHC magnets will be operated at 1.9 K above absolute zero, that is almost 300 C below room temperature. This unusually low limit puts new demands on cable quality and coil assembly. European industry is already delivering cables that can carry 15,000 amps at 1.9 K and withstand forces which build up to
hundreds of tons per metre in the coils as the field rises. The structural requirements of the "end caps" magnets are incredible.
Atlas end cap magnet being transported. This thing has to support the weight of several lorries to work, but bending as much as FIA stewards under pressure
Now, what kind of electric motors can we develop with these things? (hi, GreenPower Dude!) That, I die to see.
). 
