The intersecting storage rings of CERN

As part of their equipment for investigating the fundamental structure of matter, and in particular the effects of high-energy collisions between protons, the European Organization for Nuclear Research has developed the Intersecting Storage Rings described here. Remarkable as a piece of large-scale precision engineering, the rings are already yielding valuable data and amongst the interesting results to emerge so far is the evidence for a possible granular structure in the proton. (26 refs).