The story was also followed up by the Western Daily Press on 11 May, and by ITV West News and BBC Points West on 11 and 14 May, respectively.

Up to 30 scientists, including students, at the University are working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator and collider located at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) near Geneva. Twenty of these scientists are working on a piece of equipment known as the CMS detector, an essential part of the world’s largest scientific experiment which hopes to recreate conditions in the Universe as they were less than a second after the Big Bang. LHC is now in the final stages of construction and is due to start operations in spring 2008.

Representatives from the local media and the University's Press Office had been invited to CERN by the Science and Technology Facilities Council as part of an initiative to inform people in the regions where universities are working at CERN about the work of the particle physics laboratory.

For more information on the CMS detector project, see the news item at www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2007/5315.html.