Every time two beams of particles collide inside an accelerator, the universe lets us in on a little secret. Sometimes it's a particle no one has ever seen. Other times, it's a fleeting glimpse of conditions that last existed in the first moments after the Big Bang. A particle accelerator is the machine that makes those collisions possible. Its job is straightforward to describe: Take tiny charged particles and drive them to extreme speeds so the resulting collisions carry enough force to break matter apart. However, pure speed isn't the point; the goal is to create collisions so energetic tha