[testtestabcdef]

That's crazy. I never would've thought that either. These small facts which you can barely read in "mainstream media" are what makes the LHC absolutely fascinating and impressive.

I was always like "Yeah that's just a small beam and the magnets are to navigate it in circles". In retrospect it does make sense now why people were concerned about the collision of such beams.

[Ekaros]

Also, when you really think about it. Why would you need 27 kilometre long circle if you weren't dealing with some absolutely massive amounts of energy. Couldn't you do it with lot less?

[Sharlin]

Indeed. It’s all about the curvature. Even with all those incredibly fancy superconducting magnets you just can’t force protons this fast onto a circular path any smaller than this when they very much would like to go straight.