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LHC a best invention of 2008

What's better than a bionic hand, but not quite as good as an electric sports car? The Large Hadron Collider, according to TIME Magazine. This month the magazine awarded the LHC fifth place in its annual list of the top 50 inventions of the year.

The top invention of 2008 was a retail DNA test that makes personal genotyping available to anyone who can afford the $399 price. Rounding out the top five were a $100,000 electric sports car, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter set to launch in February 2009, and an online hub for network TV shows and movies.

Less highly-ranked, but still notable for physics fans were the Roadrunner supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratory (#10); a memristor, a new kind of circuit that remembers its history even when turned off (#13); and an eco-friendly refrigerator design patented by Albert Einstein and a collaborator in 1930 (#31). And notable no matter what you're a fan of: smog-busting cement and a moving skyscraper.

Of the LHC, TIME makes no excuses for naming it a best invention despite the recent setbacks, noting:

The mammoth machine will send protons wheeling in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light, then smash them together at 6,000 times a second to try to answer such deep questions as why mass exists and whether the universe has extra dimensions. If it takes a few extra months to find out, so what?

You can read about or watch the best inventions at TIME Magazine.