Beneath the border of France and Switzerland runs a 27-kilometre ring where scientists hurl particles at each other at almost the speed of light and sift through the wreckage for the fundamental ingredients of reality. This episode explores the Large Hadron Collider — the biggest machine humanity has ever built — and what it's for.

You'll come away understanding why smashing particles together reveals what the universe is made of, how the collider found the famous Higgs boson, and why scientists keep looking for particles they haven't yet seen.

Talking Science is sponsored by Kinsoft. Visit www.kinsoft.com.au

Further reading: CERN – "The Large Hadron Collider"; Symmetry Magazine; Sean Carroll, *The Particle at the End of the Universe*.