Arnd takes me on a tour of the complex, starting with the linear accelerator, the first part of the Tevatron. While the tevatron itself is the biggest and bestest thing of its kind in the world, a lot of it, I am told, runs on what's basically 1950's technology.

He guides me through a maze of halls packed with giant, Forbidden-Planet-looking machines, adorned with shiny levers and glowing switches. It's pretty imposing.

A lot of the machines have names. Apparently they break all the time, and need to be easily identifiable. Seems there's only one company that makes them, so reliability isn't top notch. Sure enough, as we pass down the hall, we see at least two of the short-timers being repaired.

The tour ends at the huge bay where the DZero dectector gets maintained. When I arrive, the detector is operational, so the bay is empty. The machine itself is behind the concrete wall at the back, monitoring the particles created in the Tevatron's high-energy atomic collisions.

Arnd looks out over the DZero maintenance bay.