The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in California is funded by the US Department of Energy but operated by Stanford University. The SLAC has a 3km long underground linear accelerator which is the longest linear accelerator in the world and claimed to be the world’s straightest object. The building above ground on top of the accelerator, the “klystron gallery”, is the longest building in the United States.

The Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois is another US based lab with a linear accelerator but this one uses a Synchrotron. A synchrotron is a circular accelerator that uses a magnetic field to turn the particles and an electric field to accelerate them. By careful tuning of these two fields particles can be accelerated to 99.999999% of the speed of light. Once particles get up to these speeds the experments can begin. The super accelerated particles are shoved through things, bent with mirrors and have other particles injected into the steam to see what happens.

These two circles that look like a sideways eight are the Tevatron at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois and make up the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator. Four miles in circumference, the Tevatron is housed in a tunnel about 30 feet below the big ring you see in the aerial view. The particles complete the four-mile course nearly 50 thousand times a second. Damn, that is fast.

The other big player in particle accelerators in CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the world’s largest physics laboratory. CERN is located on the border between France and Switzerland and is otherwise known as the birth place of that thing called the World Wide Web. CERN have numerous particle accelerators but the biggest is the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC is currently under construction in tunnels that used to house the Large Electron-Positron Collider which ran from 1989 to 2000. This tunnel is 27km in length and 100 metres underground! It’s like something out of Half-Life! Unfortunately there isn’t very much to see from the air, the LHC is located somewhere in the area between Geneava airport and the Jura mountains to the North. I’ve been staring at the imagery for a while and I can’t make out any trace of it on the surface. Can you?

I’m sure there are many more accelerators out there to see but my head was starting to hurt from reading about particle physics. Feel free to post your particle physics related finds as comments on this post!

Thanks: Scott Lawson, dan, Matt, Jason, Rahul Karnik, David, joe, Foo Bar, Matt, Tom, Ilia Baldine, Douglas Boberg, Fred, Dave D, Brian Potter, Steve Abrahamson, Thomas Wade, Laurence Dorazio, Daryl Achilles, Tony Scislaw, Marc Armstrong, Tyler Stevenson, Joe, Luistxo Fernandez, Janx Spirit, David Drexler, David Drexler, Matt W., Matthew, Rodrigo, Joe, Jochen, Matthew Sz., Williamckley, Drew DeMott, Michael Lehet, Hubert Grzywacz, Bjørnven, Thomas, J Foote, Brad Lauster, Dalvenjah FoxFire, Robert Bogdon, cjw, Parker, Jim Duncan, Steve Bryson, Jeffrey Deane, Ryan Means, Benjamin, Jason Harris, David Drexler, Bobllingson, Lennie Stovel, punk floyd, Jason, SFuller and Sounil Yu.

Yes, you heard me right – that’s the world’s largest cotton swab!

(Of course, this is actually a member of the South American Cotton Ball Army in disguise).

Thanks to me & Kyle French.

This is Jim and Linda Onan’s Gold Pyramid House in Wadsworth, Illinois. Yes, it really is a six-storey gold-plated pyramid in the middle of Illinois – and apparently it’s the world’s largest gold-plated object.

Near the entrance to the grounds you can also spot a 64-foot statue of Ramesses (not sure which one though), and just to the west of the main pyramid are three smaller pyramids, which join to form a three-car garage. Practical huh?

Thanks to Barry Scott, David Reeves and Seth.

The Chicago suburb of Niles is home to the world-famous Leaning Tower of Pisa. No, wait, that can’t be right! This must be the Leaning Tower of Niles, a 1/2 size recreation of the Pisa bell tower, however there’s no bell as Niles’ version is a water tower.

More info and a ground-level shot on Roadside America.

Thanks: Mike Zeidler

Morton Salt is apparently North America’s leading producer of salt and have been based in Chicago since being founded in 1848. The roof of the factory has the company name, along with their slogan “When it Rains It Pours” and the “Morton Salt Girl”, a drawing of a young girl waking in the rain, accidentally dropping salt behind her.

It took me a while to work out the meaning of the logo and slogan (the salt will pour even when there’s moisture in the air) but during my Googling I found this bizarre tattoo of a dedicated Morton Salt fan.

Thanks: Steve, El Warren & Doug