Do you know your quarks from your leptons? Need to brush up on wave-particle duality? CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has announced that it will open a permanent “Universe of Particles” exhibition on the ground floor of its incredible conference center - the Globe of Science and Innovation. The exhibition is designed to provide visitors with a fascinating insight into the world of particles and will feature a display on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest accelerator – or as CERN describes it, “one of the most sophisticated scientific tools ever built to explore new territories of knowledge.”
The "Universe of particles" exhibition will present visitors with some of the great questions of contemporary physics - presented in a number of illuminated spheres that act as metaphors for elementary particles and the stars – the smallest and largest particles in the world. If that’s sounding a little profound, you can relax…there are interactive kiosks, an interactive screen and interactive panel, display cases and audio kiosks to inform and entertain you, and at regular intervals, the walls of the Globe where the exhibition is housed will display a video detailing the history of the Big Bang and the Universe.
CERN Director-General, Rolf Heuer said, "It's vital for us to reach out to society and explain our research aims and the associated spinoffs."
Visitors will travel amongst the luminous spheres to discover answers to their questions about particles and contemporary physics which CERN is currently exploring with the LHC and other accelerators. There will be an emphasis on interactive and visual effects and four zones - mysterious worlds, the LHC, detecting particles and science without borders – will illustrate, explain, recount and present information for the visitor. The zones will be positioned around a large, disc-shaped screen which will display images of LHC collisions. Visitors will learn about infinitesimally large and infinitesimally small particles - from the Big Bang to the present day.
The exhibition is open to the public from 1 July, 2010 and entry is free. The Globe of Science and Innovation is located at Route de Meyrin, Genève.
