Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider put up with a lot. Not only do they withstand the hundreds of millions of particle collisions that take place within their detectors each second; they also collect huge amounts of information from them.

It’s only going to get more complicated: CERN is busy preparing to turn up the energy of the LHC in 2015.

To face the challenge, scientists around the world are working non-stop to make sure their detectors are fast enough and tough enough for the increase in collisions. They do this by testing materials and prototypes in beams of high-energy particles that simulate the environment inside the accelerator.

One place where they can do this is the Test Beam Facility at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, near Chicago in the US. 

Read more: "Labs work together toward higher-energy LHC" – Symmetry