Usually the only things that get a chance to see the inside of the the Large Hadron Collider are subatomic particles careening towards each other at (almost) the speed of light. But now, thanks to Google Street view, ordinary humans can take a stroll down those very same high-tech pipes, and all you need is a computer.
Piecing together a coherent street view tour of one of history’s largest and most expensive science projects wasn’t easy; the detectors and tunnels of the Large Hadron Collider are so big that it took two weeks to photograph them, with six-sided panorama photos of every three meters of the lab.
The project took Google two years to put the finishing touches on, having started tracking the coordinates of each image in 2011 and stitching them together into a final smooth product this year, according to Vice’s Motherboard blog,.
There’s more than just the collider. You can click through for a an interactive tour of the entire CERN facility in Geneva, Switzerland, which contains the world’s largest particle physics laboratory.
Each section of the tour explains a bit about what the machinery is used for, which is great. But even considering it solely as art, the collider is fascinating.
H/T Motherboard / Photo via Google Street View