10 Membranes

The Tevatron particle accelerator at the Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. While the LHC is down this remains the largest operational particle accelerator on the planet; it, and the Fermilab itself, have way cooler and more appropriate names than CERN and LHC. These are the people the study squarks, gauginos and p-branes; who work in 11 dimensional Calabi-Yau space, who can trace the Hawking radiation of black holes billions of years old, who examine virtual, anti and KK particles. These are the brightest, most extraordinary names on the planet and all they can come up with is CERN and LHC? Against the Tevatron? Well, it’s lost the naming battle anyway.

As an interesting coda the reason why the LHC is down is that some of the magnets involved have broken, specifically the circuitary has failed. This was all done by Fermilab.