Twenty-Seven Kilometres is based on Tim O’Riley’s experience of looking at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva.

CERN is a vast project whose centrepiece, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is a circular particle accelerator installed 175 metres beneath the land between the Alps and the Jura mountains. Perhaps given the scales involved, the book reflects on scientific endeavour in a broad sense, mulling over how the immensity of nature is squared with more everyday concerns, and exploring the human dimension to science and its status as both an ideal realm and a tangible practice. Perhaps above all, O’Riley looks for those transient, poignant and often-humorous responses that people have to the “machine” and its make up.

Language: English