The Large Hadron Collider is like the supermodel of physics — larger than life and photographed a million times. Many people aren't exactly sure what its for and it's always upstaging the other science news. It's no surprise that a device with that much personality has become iconic enough to inspire a Lego homage.

The man behind the Lego LHC is Sascha Mehlhase a post-doctoral physicist out of Denmark. He's taken the same passion he has for physics into the hobby of building things out of Legos. His LHC is frighteningly complex — looking as much like the original as tiny plastic bricks will allow.

Let's go over the facts. It is made out of 9,500 pieces and is roughly 1:50 in scale (close to the sale of the Lego man). It's approximately 3'L x 2'W x 2'H and took around 33 hours to build — though Melhase notes it was spread out over several weekends. Oh, and he took about 48 hours to build a one time 3D model. The total cost was about $2,500.

With a model that complex, it may just be that in its own way the Lego LHC might just steal a little of the spotlight from the real LHC. At least for a little while.

Sascha Mehlhase, via Technabob