Really?? I would think it would be liquid helium which is much colder and also nonflammable/explosive! Simple mistakes like this take away from the overall believability of the article.
Yep, it's helium, superfluid helium, to be precise.
"LEP was closed down at the end of 2000 to make way for the construction of the LHC in the same tunnel. This liberated most of the existing cryogenic infrastructure from LEP for further use and upgrading for the LHC, which will require the largest 1.8 K refrigeration and distribution system in the world to cool some 1800 superconducting magnet systems distributed around the 27 km long tunnel (see CERN Courier January/February 2004 p27). A total of 37,500 tonnes has to be cooled to 1.9 K, requiring about 96 tonnes of helium, two-thirds of which is used for filling the magnets.Although normal liquid helium at 4.5 K would be able to cool the magnets so that they become superconducting, the LHC will use superfluid helium at the lower temperature of 1.8 K to improve the performance of the magnets. The magnets are cooled by making use of the very efficient heat-transfer properties of superfluid helium, and kilowatts of refrigeration power are transported over more than 3 km with a temperature difference of less than 0.1 K.
He lost me with, "Sub-atomic particles called protons whiz around the tunnel in opposite directions until reaching darn close to nature's speed limit" .
Remember, virtually all articles of this sort are written by journalists....the second-least educated products of our colleges and universities (least educated being education majors). Do NOT expect deep accuracy from such.