I'll tell you very briefly how they work. ...The first thing we need is some ...s, or even atoms themselves perhaps. - Suzie Sheehy

[A]s I studied more physics the question... at the core... was: "What is matter, and how does it interact to create everything around us—including ourselves?"

So it's interesting, even though it seems like a stupid question to say what would happen if you stuck your head in it. It does actually present some interesting real problems in engineering, in actually designing these machines.

Now the radiation dose that the LHC beam could give you could kill you 76,000 times over, but the radiation dose you'd receive from a beam of say 200 MeV, a relatively modest proton beam, is much lower and can... be used to treat cancer... [W]e use this in... , which we're getting in the UK. We actually did pioneer it and... it hasn't quite come back onto the NHS yet...