YOU don’t need a degree with distinctions in physics to take satisfaction and benefit from Mark Levinson’s documentary shot inside and about the biggest machine yet made, the Large Hadron Collider or LHD.

The scale and engineering of the LHD are visually breathtaking. The intellectual energy and complexity of the science is mind-boggling. The LHD’s implications for planet Earth and the rest of the known universe are profound simply for having confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson. But the film is most of all about people meeting the challenge of propelling two atomic particles around a circular track at speeds approaching that of light to see what happens if they collide.

“Particle Fever” focuses its attention on six physicists.

Two of them are women.

In 1982, seven years after receiving a piano diploma, Fabiola Gianotti received her PhD in particle physics from University in Milan. She later spent 20 years leading the biggest experiment and supervising nearly 3000 physicists and engineers around the world.

Marathoning, cycling, rowing and mountain climbing provided conditioning for the 16-hour days American post-doc Monica Dunford spent working on the ATLAS detector. Her ebullient persona adds delightful lucidity to her explanations of her work.

“Particle Fever” espouses a fundamental principle of human existence. Today’s high-tech world results from people for millennia seeking explanations for life, the universe and everything else simply because they want to know.

The film is as exciting as any Hollywood confection purporting to present science as a dramatic element foreboding great calamity unless the handsome hero and his pretty female companion sort it out in the last reel. But you’ve got to believe “Particle Fever” because it is 100 per cent real.

At Dendy