The poster for the documentary Particle Fever almost makes it look  like a sequel to The Ring. It’s a simple image of a circle in white and colored lines. The tagline doesn’t explain much, either: “With one switch, everything changes.” So what’s it about?

The circle represents the shape of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s biggest particle accelerator, located underground beneath the border of Switzerland and France. First switched on in 2008, the machine sends particle beams in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light. When these high-energy beams collide, they recreate the conditions that existed just after the Big Bang.

One purpose of the machine was to search for the Higgs boson, believed to give matter its mass. This enabled the stars and planets to form, eventually giving rise to life. In March scientists confirmed that a particle they found in July 2012 was, in fact, the Higgs boson.

Particle Fever tells the stories of six people involved in the epic collider’s launch and its subsequent breakthrough. Although the premise may sound dry, the film earned praise for its warm portraits of many people involved. It also makes scientific ideas accessible. “Particle Fever offers enough broad explanation to keep lay persons up to speed,” wrote critic David Gritten, who also called it “brilliant.”

At its film festival premiere, Particle Fever and another documentary jointly won the honor of the Audience Award. The filmmakers were perfect for the project: director Mark Levinson was also a physicist, and editor Walter Murch won Academy Awards for Apocalypse Now and The English Patient.

The movie has no release date yet but further information can be found on www.particlefever.com, its official website.

Check out the poster below:

Particle Fever Poster