Read Online Angels & Demons by Dan Brown - Free Book Online

nature’s most fundamental components. “Particle accelerators,” Brownell declared,
    “are critical to the future of science. Colliding particles is the key to understanding the building blocks of the universe.”
    Harvard’s Poet in Residence , a quiet man named Charles Pratt, did not look impressed. “It sounds to me,”
    he said, “like a rather Neanderthal approach to science . . . akin to smashing clocks together to discern their internal workings.”
    Brownell dropped his fork and stormed out of the room.
    So CERN has a particle accelerator? Langdon thought, as the elevator dropped. A circular tube for smashing particles . He wondered why they had buried it underground. When the elevator thumped to a stop, Langdon was relieved to feel terra firma beneath his feet. But when the doors slid open, his relief evaporated. Robert Langdon found himself standing once again in a totally alien world.
    The passageway stretched out indefinitely in both directions, left and right. It was a smooth cement tunnel, wide enough to allow passage of an eighteen wheeler. Brightly lit where they stood, the corridor turned pitch black farther down. A damp wind rustled out of the darkness—an unsettling reminder that they were now deep in the earth. Langdon could almost sense the weight of the dirt and stone now hanging above his head. For an instant he was nine years old . . . the darkness forcing him back . . . back to the five hours of crushing blackness that haunted him still. Clenching his fists, he fought it off. Vittoria remained hushed as she exited the elevator and strode off without hesitation into the darkness without them. Overhead the flourescents flickered on to light her path. The effect was unsettling, Langdon thought, as if the tunnel were alive . . . anticipating her every move. Langdon and Kohler followed, trailing a distance behind. The lights extinguished automatically behind them.
    “This particle accelerator,” Langdon said quietly. “It’s down this tunnel someplace?”
    “That’s it there.” Kohler motioned to his left where a polished, chrome tube ran along the tunnel’s inner wall.
    Langdon eyed the tube, confused. “ That’s the accelerator?” The device looked nothing like he had imagined. It was perfectly straight, about three feet in diameter, and extended horizontally the visible length of the tunnel before disappearing into the darkness. Looks more like a high-tech sewer, Langdon thought. “I thought particle accelerators were circular .”
    “This accelerator is a circle,” Kohler said. “It appears straight, but that is an optical illusion. The circumference of this tunnel is so large that the curve is imperceptible—like that of the earth.”
    Langdon was flabbergasted. This is a circle? “But . . . it must be enormous!”
    “The LHC is the largest machine in the world.”
    Langdon did a double take. He remembered the CERN driver saying something about a huge machine buried in the earth. But —
    “It is over eight kilometers in diameter . . . and twenty-seven kilometers long.”
    Langdon’s head whipped around. “Twenty-seven kilometers?” He stared at the director and then turned and looked into the darkened tunnel before him. “This tunnel is twenty-seven kilometers long? That’s . . . that’s over sixteen miles!”
    Kohler nodded. “Bored in a perfect circle. It extends all the way into France before curving back here to this spot. Fully accelerated particles will circle the tube more than ten thousand times in a single second before they collide.”
    Langdon’s legs felt rubbery as he stared down the gaping tunnel. “You’re telling me that CERN dug out millions of tons of earth just to smash tiny particles?”
    Kohler shrugged. “Sometimes to find truth, one must move mountains.”
    16
    H undreds of miles from CERN, a voice crackled through a walkie-talkie. “Okay, I’m in the hallway.”
    The technician monitoring the video screens pressed the button on his