Question: are you excited about the proton collider in switzerland?

Lily Asquith answered on 15 Jun 2010:

Yes, very excited! I’ve only been working on the Large Hadron Collider for 4 years, but I know people who have been preparing for this for more than ten years. When we started up the first time in October 2008 there was a terrible calamity involving some electronics getting hot and a big explosion meant that we had to close down for a year after just 9 days. So when it restarted in November 2009 everyone in my department was a bit nervous. Things have gone amazingly smoothly this time and we have been smashing protons together for months now with no technical problems, so now the real excitement begins- as we collect and analyse more and more data we will be in a position to answer some huge questions, perhaps even to understand why we exist at all!