Stringscape
Matthew Chalmers · Physics World · 2007
Problems such as how to cool a 27 km-circumference, 37 000 tonne ring of superconducting magnets to a temperature of 1.9 K using truck-loads of liquid helium are not the kind of things that theoretical physicists normally get excited about. It might therefore come as a surprise to learn that string theorists – famous lately for their belief in a theory that allegedly has no connection with reality – kicked off their main conference this year – Strings07 – with an update on the latest progress being made at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, which is due to switch on next May.