Exploring the Impact of Fundamental Research and International Collaboration

Mike Williams visits the ultimate cathedral of science, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, where researchers from around the world have built the largest single machine on earth to discover some of the most extreme elements of nature, from the heart of an atom to the origins of the universe.

But what drives the human need to know how the universe began and our desire to keep searching for what our world is really made of – down to the smallest particles on earth?

(Photo: A worker walks past a giant photograph of a Large Hadron Collider at an exhibition in Berlin, Germany. Credit to Getty Images)