A motley crew of curvaceous women, cardboard men and other avatars gathered last Thursday on Nature's island in Second Life. The occasion for this virtual world get-together was the premiere of Missions in Space-Time, a five-part documentary series produced by Nature Video.

The films capture conversations between young researchers and Nobel prizewinning physicists at the 2008 Nobel Laureate Meeting on Lindau Island in Germany. The first instalment discusses hopes and dreams for the Large Hadron Collider — the particle accelerator at CERN, Europe's particle-physics laboratory near Geneva in Switzerland.

Part one is available for download now; subsequent instalments will be released weekly via iTunes and online