Not many people know this but the world's larget cyclotron resides beneath the Univerisity of British Columbia's Campus, a little off to the south. The first I heard of it was from my friend Gordon. He told me that beneath my feet was another CERN and at any moment the entire campus and Vancouver too, I imagine, might just be blown up in a nuclear explosion or be sucked into a black hole and become inter-dimensional. It was the 90's and we were both Theatre students. What we didn't know about physics, we made up for with wild rumours and conspiracies theories. Science moves forward, not so sure about human nature. But I digress.

I homeschool my nine-year-old son and am always looking for fun and free things to do that are not only educational but also get us out of the house. I was sure that particle physics is on the grade 3 curriculum and so off we went.

We love going to the UBC campus. It is much more quiet and clean than downtown Vancouver. We also spend a lot of time at our local planetarium and observatory and so we were up for a trip into inter-space. And like any little boy and quite a few girls, my son loves big machines. He still likes to watch the garbage trucks. From a distance, of course.

Triumf did not disappoint on the big or the machines.

We didn't get to see the actual cyclotron. It is buried underground and underneath some pretty impressive concrete blocks. Our guide, a Italian physicist, told us he has only ever seen it once and that was after it had be shut down for a few weeks. Going down there at the wrong time would give your skin a glow Oil of Olay could never accomplish. There were radioactive signs all over the place. You'll note the one to the right. Not to worry the offending object is wrapped in hard plastic and duct tape. So we were safe. We were scanned for radioactivity on our way in and out. My hopes of becoming a mutant super hero were dashed. Yep, I remain gamma ray free.

This is the control room. On the back wall is the original analog. Digital runs the show today. The analog is probably maintained in case of alien invasion. That kind of thing. They also keep a landline on hand for when they accidently open a portal to the past and need to call 1989.

Large magnets are used to keep ionized particles on the right track making the area above the cyclotron unsafe for paperclips. My son and I learnt to defy gravity with our minds. We gained mutant powers after all.

Here they are building a mind meld machine for Thanos for the next Avengers movie. Turns out there are more of those stones and Thanos is now a talking zombie head. Shh ... tell no one that you heard it from me, but remember you heard it here first.

I may have also turned the shot on its side and have no idea what the machine is for. But isn't it pretty? Physics can be pretty. Who knew.

After all this you are probably craving the hard science of Triumf. But what does it do, you're screaming. I'll let them tell you themselves and not because the blog is getting long and my butt is sore from sitting too long.

That concludes our tour of Triumf. There was no mushroom cloud or nuclear fall out. Although we did find this strange breed of red caps growing nearby. Perhaps a home for robotic smurfs.