The new CERN visitors' center. Back in July, we were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to tour CERN, home of the Large Hadron Collider. In addition to getting some great information on how the machine gets protons up to speeds nearly that of light, and finding out the sorts of physics that scientists hope to find in its collisions, we also got a great view of some of the control rooms and hardware that help keep everything humming along. Unfortunately, with the LHC active, it wasn't possible to actually go down and see the massive detectors that capture the output of the proton collisions, but there's still a lot to see around CERN. To handle the interest generated by the LHC, CERN has built a new visitor's center to introduce the public to the work that goes on there. For this visit, however, the tour started across the street, next to the CERN gift shop (yes, it has a gift shop). The new CERN visitors' center. CERN has been in the business of smashing atoms