CERN: The 27-Kilometer Particle Smasher and the Strange Things Said by Its Director
In 2014 CERN's Director General said they were "opening doors." Within a week of the 2012 Higgs boson discovery, lightning struck the dome of St. Peter's Basilica. Twice.
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built. It collides proton beams at 99.9999991% the speed of light, 27 kilometers underground, on the French-Swiss border at Saint-Genis-Pouilly - a town named for an ancient Roman temple to Apollo, where Apollo (in some traditions) is the destroyer god, Apollyon, of Revelation 9:11.
Outside CERN headquarters stands a statue of Shiva Nataraja, the Hindu god of destruction, dancing in a ring of fire. CERN says it was a gift. It is, however, the only major physics research center in the world adorned with a destroyer god.
In 2016 CERN ran a video, leaked then "explained as a prank," showing a hooded ritual being performed in front of the Shiva statue at night.
Higgs himself called the boson "the God particle," a term he later said he regretted. The discovery was announced on July 4, 2012. Two days later lightning struck the dome of St. Peter's Basilica.
What the LHC actually does at 14 TeV - the energies at which the structure of spacetime itself flexes - is described in plain language in CERN's public outreach as "punching holes" in the vacuum. They use those words. We don't need to make this stuff up.