CERN’s Large Hadron Collider on the French-Swiss border has been getting a lot of attention as scientists prepare to smash particles into each other in an attempt to learn the secrets of the early universe and understand better the nature of matter itself.

All very exciting, and unsurprisingly, the project is very attractive to science fiction writers. Dan Brown’s Angel and Demons involved the theft of anti-matter from the facility, and a Torchwood radio play on BBC Radio 4 saw Captain Jack, Gwen and Ianto coming up against a neutron-eating alien.

Needless to say, these stories don’t worry themselves too much with getting the science right, and just get on with spinning their yarn. But James Gillies of CERN has some interesting thoughts on CERN in science fiction and on the relationship between scientific investigation and imaginative storytelling:

The facade of Torchwood’s magnificent backdrop, the Wales Millennium
Centre, is adorned with words penned by the country’s national poet,
Gwyneth Lewis: “Creu gwir fel gwydr o ffwrnais awen (Creating truth
like glass from inspiration’s furnace)/ In these stones horizons sing“?
Did she know when she wrote them that she too would visit CERN? Her
words would sit as comfortably over the door of a science lab as they
do on an arts complex. And perhaps that’s the point. Both enrich
humanity, and the more often they get together the better.