Over the last five years or so, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN has been picking up baffling press and media coverage about particle interactions and Higgs Bosom discoveries, but hopefully with the new Collider exhibition coming to the Science Museum in November 2013, maybe we’ll all get a bit more insight into what it all means. Giving visitors a look at what has been described as “one of the greatest scientific experiments of our times” the exhibition should provide a common denominator explanation of the importance of the facility.
Taking ten years to build and with four years worth of action under its belt since its opening in 2008, the Large Hadron Collider is starting to pick up a lot of data, but for the general public it’s not easy to see or appreciate the importance or relevance of the scientific study to their daily lives. This is where the upcoming exhibition should be able to step in, explaining in layman’s terms what they’re up to under the mountains spanning the French-Swiss border, close to Geneva in Switzerland.
The exhibition is schedule to open on the 13th November 2013 and will be continuing on until the 30th April 2013. Tickets are £10 for adults, but while concessions will be available for £7, the Science Museum does recommend that the exhibition is suitable for kids of the 16 years + variety. Tickets are available to order now from the Science Museum website with the exhibition fittingly set to be located in the site’s basement.
The Collider: Step Inside The World’s Greatest Experiment exhibition aims to bring a behind the scenes display to centre of London that they hope will give visitors the closest experience to going to CERN outside of actually visiting the particle accelerator itself. Audio and visual installations will be a big part of the exhibition to simulate a day in the life of the Hadron colliding facility.
This will include a Control Room simulator, virtual scientists and engineers, research workbench recreations and a visual demonstration of particle beams being fired into the accelerator tunnels to deliver collisions that are 7 times faster than was previously possible. There will also be an opportunity for science lovers to get up close and personal with some of the actual 15m magnets that are used to steer the particles around the 27km tunnel.
The history of particle physics will also be explained in more detail, taking us from the very first concepts of particle existence to some of the more modern supersymmetric theories, which are starting to be drawn into question as the LHC has failed to find evidence to support them.
The fact that the Large Hadron Collider is one of the most expensive scientific research initiatives ever devised, does little to help people understand what is all means, but the Science Museum should give a little bit of knowledge to all of us.
higgs bosom FTW!