THE internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.
At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.
As the world's largest and most expensive science experiment, the new particle accelerator buried 300ft beneath the Alpine foothills along the Swiss French border is 17 miles long and up to 12 stories high. It is designed to generate temperatures of more than a trillion degrees centigrade.