How Do Coliders Work?

The reason the top cork took so long to discover, decades of searching, was because it was more massive than anybody expected. So he had to build a whole series of larger and larger coliders to get to those high energies. Coliders come in two varieties: linear colliders that are like a straight line; or circular ones where you can push particles many times before they collide. The faster you're going, the stronger the magnets need, or strong magnets - either big enough for a really, really large ring. And there's like 12 hundred magnets all the way around this 33 kilometer ring.