Last week I was in Geneva doing a talk at LIFT 2012, which I will post when it goes online. As part of the conference I was invited to tour CERN and the Large Hardron Collider. Despite a hungover 7AM wakeup I managed to make the train to CERN. What an amazing experience!!
A cutaway showing how the beam line section are connected. The beam line tubes contract several centimeters as they are cooled with liquid helium, so bellows and sliding joins are used:
This is the main testing facility for beam line tubes:
This is a cavity resonator used in the Large Electron Positron Collider – the predecessor to the LHC:
Here we see the control room for the Large Hadron Collider. SO COOL.
James Bridle , who spoke at LIFT, wrote a nice post on our CERN visit.
Prometheus Fusion Perfection 
Awesome! Are you going to visit the giant parking lot in Cadarache?
Did you get some help on how to build an electron gun?
cavity resolator should be “resonator”
fixed!
Looking forward to the LIFT video. I checked out the video section on the lift12 site, but your talk isn’t there yet. Hey, maybe you need to sell tee-shirts like the OSSI guy to fund your Polywell. :-)
Hum this is actually the SPS control room (with the PS control room in the back) the LHC control is on the opposite side ;P