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PRESENT AT THE CREATION

This is your invitation to become a partner of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in its Big Bang Project - a permanent state-of-the-art discoverycentre and interactive exhibition at its site outside Geneva.

There, in 2006, CERN will create a Big Bang easy to see and understand - and makemuch else of particle physics intelligible and memorable as well.

It will be the first time anywhere that advanced physics is made an intuitive experi-ence to be lived and enjoyed, rather than witnessed and learned.For this cultural challenge CERN seeks partners.They are to endow and manage a foundation in joint ownership with the Labora-tory. The Foundation, in turn, will run and merchandise the centre, to be named,Big Bang.

Your own distinguished alliance is cordially invited.

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THE PROJECT IN BRIEF

The Big Bang Experience Two Hours Out of This World 4-5

A Cosmic Factory CERN at Work 6

In Partnership with CERN Benefits to Founders 7

A Prime Site Room to Expand 8-9

VISIT TO BIG BANG

Afloat in the Cosmos To begin the Great Voyage 10-11

The Nature of Everything At large in the Small World 12-13

The Big World From the First Split Second 14-15

The World of CERN Monumental Enterprise 16-17

Beyond Human Perception Pedalling a Bicycle 18-19

Virtual Travel Agency To Hypothetical Universes 20-21

BIG BANG PROJECT

Business Plan at a Glance 22-23

ould it not be exciting to witness the first instantof Creation? See the Universe expand? And realize that the particles colliding in aphysicist’s accelerator are actually reproducing what happened a billionth of a secondafter the beginning of time in the Big Bang of Creation itself?

Nature spans an incredibly large range of dimensions in space and time, from the tinyconstituents hidden deep inside the protons and neutrons of atomic nuclei, throughto the threadlike strings in which the galaxies hang together. Perched on a fragilerung of a vast ladder, peering down at atoms and gazing up at stars, mankind nowbegins to understand the strangeness and beauty of its own cosmic origin.

The Big Bang Experience is a live voyage through those dimensions, in which thevisitor perceives the unity and the links between them and sees himself as part of thelive, still expanding Universe.

CERN will combine the efforts of the world’s top scientists, educationalists andentertainment experts to offer the layman a highly personal voyage of discoverythat roves far out of this world. He won't look at life the same way. For some, theshock will be equivalent to hearing from Newton that the Moon obeys the samelaws of gravity as a falling apple.

The second half of this booklet describes this amazing voyage in more detail.

The Big Bang ExperienceTwo Hours Out of This World

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he particles which CERN studies are so minute thatthe energy they carry is only about one thousand millionth of a calorie. And yet particlecollisions within an accelerator concentrate this energy into such tiny space that they actually mimick the Big Bang. Concentrated energy produces new particles, the reasonthe work of the Laboratory is likened to a cosmic factory.

Huge detectors unravel the forces acting between particles, and researchers figure out, 15billion years after the Big Bang of Creation, how matter actually was born. Why is thisimportant? Because we do not know what we do not know.

The quest for knowledge goes back as far as civilization itself. A century ago, scientistshad just discovered all kinds of mysterious rays: X-rays, cathode rays, alpha and beta rays.Their research changed our daily lives, giving us, along the way, television, transistors,medical imaging devices and computers. CERN’s own research, which began in 1954 asone of Europe’s first joint ventures, opens new domains to this fascinating quest, involv-ing today more than half the world’s particle physicists at the front edge of research.

A worldwide powerhouse owned by 20 European nations, CERN’s comprehensive rangeof training schemes and fellowships attracts student physicists and engineers who go onto careers in industry where their experience of working in a high-tech and multi nationalenvironment is highly valuable. And it was to enable all 7000 associated or staff re-searchers to collaborate fluently, that CERN invented the World-Wide-Web!

Duty-bound to spend its entire budget for fundamental research exclusively, and to makeall of its results public, CERN now embarks on a public experiment to make its long andpatient voyage of discovery an adventure anyone can share. What was previously thoughtby many to be incomprehensible will be made as riveting as Star Wars.

The Big Bang discovery centre and interactive exhibition will open to the public at thesame time its new “cosmic factory” LHC goes to work to pluck another secret from theUniverse’s infinity of mystery.

A Cosmic FactoryCERN at work

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re particle physics and astrophysics beyond or-dinary perception? It would seem so. A million atoms do fit across the width of a hair,and they are huge compared to the particles CERN is studying. Is this difficult to un-derstand?

In detail perhaps, but not its overall purpose. It is more a question of communicationtechniques creatively used to explain the unfamiliar. The fascination and excitementof the Big Bang Experience can be shared by anybody.

It will set a landmark because it will never have been done on this scale. CERN in-tends a model breakthrough in the understanding of science by showing particlephysics as a subject as apt for school children as for entertainment of the broad public.

But bringing its research to life for general fascination depends not on CERN alone,nor its specialist consultants, but on the support of farsighted sponsors: businessmen,institutions and industrial companies who join the Laboratory as partners in the BigBang Foundation.

They are the source of the additional CHF 60,4 million needed to finance the Pro-ject on top of the CHF 9,5 million provided by the Laboratory to get it started.They are expected also to play an active and visible role, as they wish, in the creationof the Big Bang interactive exhibition and discovery centre and in its subsequent,long-term operation.

The Foundation will appoint management to run the discovery centre and to li-cense reproduction and use elsewhere of its exhibits and identity.

The Sponsors of Big Bang will be identified by name and logo. They will also be en-titled to dedicated facilities in which to receive customers, organize seminars, socialgatherings, shows and temporary exhibitions.

In Partnership with CERNBenefits to Founders

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he entrance to the Big Bang discovery centre andinteractive exhibition will face the headquarters of CERN in Meyrin on the Franco-Swiss border at the western outskirts of Geneva. The centre is designed to comfor-tably entertain 500 visitors at a time, with a yearly target of 250’000. Constructionwill begin in 2003, to be completed in 4 years.

For the Capital Phase of its development, CERN will provide various in-kindcontributions amounting to CHF 9.5 million:

A prime site with easy access on a 50,000 m2 lot facing a main thoroughfare inand out of Geneva, 20 minutes from the centre of the city, three kilometres fromCointrin International Airport, and adjacent to exits from both the Lyon-Zurichand the Milano-Paris autoroutes.

Its scientific and technical expertise, to originate thematic content of the displaysto occupy 7,500 m2 of new floor space, with a further 14,000 m2 featuring par-king for 300 visitor cars and buses as well as access roadways, walkways, gardens,service facilities and room for eventual expansion.

A renovated former experimental area in a cavern 40 metres underground hou-sing an authentic, large particle detector.

Throughout its Operational Phase, the exhibit will benefit from an annual contri-bution by the Laboratory. It pledges to provide scientists and engineers secondedfrom its staff to act as lecturers and guides, a revolving review of the displays to ensu-re accuracy and topicality, and active participation to refine educational relevance.CERN will also meet all utility costs, including cleaning, security and energy.

Now let us take a tour to Big Bang itself...

A Prime SiteRoom to Expand

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o prepare for his voyage through dimensions in theCERN discovery centre, the visitor enters a large dome-like hall that uses mirrors andprojection techniques to make him feel afloat in cosmic space.

“Science has found not only that the Universe is accessible to human understanding, but alsothat we are a part of the Cosmos, born from it, our fate deeply connected with it. The mostbasic human events and the most trivial trace back to the Universe and its origins. TheCosmos is all that is or ever was, or ever will be.” (Carl Sagan)

Just so. And for the first time, at a stroke of surprised, personal recognition, he knowsit. Spark chambers revealing cosmic ray showers surround him. He sees the SolarSystem from outside. He has been eased painlessly away from his daily reality – andfrom its petty, earthly proportions of size and scale. He floats among comets andflashing stars whose reality, he finds, is appropriate to his own. So that as he ap-proaches the greatest of all mysteries, he has been equipped by a change of percep-tion.

Afloat in the CosmosTo begin the Great Voyage

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nly recently have physicists corroborated WilliamBlake’s poetic vision. The first voyage of discovery will lead the visitor into matter - agrain of sand, a cell, an atom - the stuff he is made of. And when he arrives at thesmallest dimensions of space and time, he will realise that the key to the secret of theUniverse lies inside of us.

“At Large in the Small World” is a sequence of landscapes spiralling down intosmaller and smaller worlds magnified for the visitor. At each level he seems to shrinkto a thousandth of his previous size and progressively discovers worlds too small tobe visible. Biology, medicine, chemistry and physics appear in turn, only at a differ-ent degree of structure.

Reduced to an apparent size of 1 millimetre, he arrives in the Milli-World, the realmof biology, bacteria, and cells. A human hair has taken on the dimensions of a pieceof rope sturdy enough to tie up a yacht. Integrated circuits, the head of a DVD-player,the structures on the surface of a compact disc have his size and reveal intricate andsurprising details.

Shrinking still further, he enters the Micro-World, the realm of molecular biologyand medicine. There, he strolls through the complex factory of the human cell:jammed with molecules of all sizes and shapes, it includes the very long and thinDNA double helix in its nucleus and shows the busyness of life in all its magnificence.

The Nano-World unveils the secrets of atomic physics and chemistry. The DNAdouble-helix is now the size of an enormous staircase. The visitor is small enough toexplore the inside of an atom.

The following Pico-World - at 1/100 of the size of a hydrogen atom - is a surprise:there all matter mainly consists of empty space. But on entering the Femto-World,the visitor sees suddenly the complex structure of its nucleus.This is the world of par-ticle physics, displaying the breakthrough discoveries of the last century: all matter inthe Universe, from the Big Bang to now, has been made from only twelve basic typesof particles.

The Big Bang World is the ultimate frontier of this astonishing walk – a place of eeriesilence where the secrets of space and time wait to be explored. It is here, at this cli-max of his journey into matter, that he becomes aware that the Big Bang started froma point smaller than this. Every atom of our body contains the secret of Creation.

The Nature of EverythingAt Large in the Small World

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“To see a World in a Grain of Sand,

And a Heaven in a WildFlower, Hold Infinity in the

palm of your hand,And Eternity in an hour.”

he visitor enters a planetarium and takes a seat fora trip to the beginning of Space and Time. Accelerating away from this familiarworld, he leaves behind not only CERN, Geneva, Europe, the Earth, but the entireSolar System. Only when he has got beyond our giant, spiralling Milky Way – intowhich our Sun has receded, now out of sight amid the brightness of 100’000 millionother stars – does he realise that the direction of time has been reversed: the Universeis contracting. As he approaches the beginning of Space and Time it becomes hotterand much smaller in size. Still further, 15 billion years back to the Big Bang itself, thewhole cosmos is smaller than the point of a needle.

The traveller manoeuvres through the Big Bang. The arrow of time reverses againand he watches the Universe evolving from its tiny beginning. Faster than the blinkof an eye, a series of events defines its destiny: energy condenses into particles and -following a prescription by the brand new Laws of Nature - atoms build up fromquarks and electrons. Analogous to the sharp change that occurs when water turnsinto ice, each snowflake acquiring its own, unmistakable symmetry among an infinitenumber of possibilities, atomic matter in the rapidly cooling cosmos begins to as-semble our Universe.

Now watching the Universe expand, the traveller is present at the birth and death ofthe first stars. Negotiating a hazardous path through exploding supernovae and nar-rowly missing black holes, he observes the creation of the ingredients of life. Zigzag-ging through squalls of collapsing matter, he arrives in time for an appointment withthe birth of our own Sun. From the cosmic debris around it, the young Earth accretesits treasures.

Returning to this small island of life in the vastness of space, the traveller knows theUniverse is still expanding, and at a furious rate. That he himself speeds throughspace and time. That every particle in his body is 15 billion years old, a direct de-scendant of the very first event. And that given one tiny change in the events hap-pening during the first split second, he and this living world would not exist.

The Big WorldFrom the First Spl it Second

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o give visitors an authentic sense of the look andfeel of the Laboratory’s working tools, the World of CERN invites them 40 metresunderground for a walk through a mock-up of a particle accelerator and a large de-tector. Later, standing close to a model of the most powerful instrument on Earth -the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – staff scientists explain its role in their most ad-vanced enterprise to date, allowing them to recreate the conditions existing only onetrillionth of a second after the Big Bang.

The visitor feels overwhelmed. But he is told: The functioning of an accelerator anda detector may be slightly disorienting ideas, but only on first encounter. With betteracquaintance, they gain much in charm. To prove his point, the guide invites hisguests to sit for a simulated ride as an accelerated particle. After all, shouldn’t physicsbe great fun?

Within seconds, the visitor is being propelled out of the chain of CERN accelera-tors and into the huge LHC ring at almost the speed of light. Another boost and hefinds himself on a collision course with billions of particles coming the other way –and in clusters. In the inevitable (and blazing) head-on collision, he is transformedinto matter last seen inside the Big Bang itself.

Back in the real world, a stroll through the section on CERN technology revealssome of the many applications of fundamental research in physics, notably television,lasers, computers and the World-Wide-Web. A history section offers stories andportraits of the people behind the most extraordinary discoveries of the last centuries.And finally, in a high-tech facility for virtual reality, the visitor is given free rein – orhelp – to explore ideas that have caught his own imagination.

The World of CERNMonumental Enterpr ise

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ntimatter and matter converting into energy?The flow of time slowing down? Fluctuations in the quantum world? What soundlike Star Trek implausibilities are daily reality at CERN. Beyond Human Perceptionchallenges the visitor with concepts to fire the outer limits of his fantasy: A fully in-teractive environment displays once-baffling phenomena which have now become -for physicists - as familiar as the post-Copernican Solar System.

Two examples:

The Relativity Bicycle. In a world where the speed of light (300’000 km/sec) is 30 km/h, the visitor gets on a bicycle and pedals through a virtual three-dimen-sional landscape. Astonishing things happen as he approaches 30 km/h: even try-ing very hard, he can never reach the speed of 30 km/h because mass is increasinginstead of speed. Therefore he no longer can get his bicycle around a sharp bend.Time slows down and familiar objects of his world change shape. When the riderreturns to his starting point, he will theoretically be younger than a twin brotherwho might have waited for him.

Antimatter Annihilations. Antiprotons transported in an electromagnetic trapfrom the world’s only low-energy antimatter factory at CERN, just a few hundredmetres away, are released at regular intervals of time. They are annihilated in animaging particle detector where their mass transforms first into energy and thenin new particles, which also leave visible tracks. It all happens in front of the visi-tor. In this case, the super detector is his own eye.

But then there are the new, unsolved mysteries currently preoccupying researchers atCERN. Are we living on the surface of an 11-dimensional world? What happens in-side a black hole? What is the mysterious dark matter that determines the ultimatefate of our Universe? These are questions to inspire laymen as much as scientists, andwhet their appetites for the compelling adventure of Science made real by the BigBang Experience.

Beyond Human PerceptionPedal l ing a Bicycle

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ow would you like a guided tour to the centreof our galaxy? Or to the outskirts of a black hole? Does a trip into an exploding Sunappeal? With the help of an experienced scientist, you could also play with the con-stants of Nature to explore the fragile balance of forces that allowed the evolution oflife in the Universe.

It is all possible with the Virtual Travel Agency - a theatre with state-of-the-art vir-tual reality equipment. Here, groups of visitors, in particular school classes, exploreconcepts of their choice, together with a scientific guide or a teacher. They can visitthe inside of an atom and ask questions about the intriguing phenomena they en-counter there.They can watch what happens inside CERN's Large Hadron Collider,and try to track down the elusive “Higgs” boson for themselves. Or they can explorehypothetical Universes where things might be different.

This group excursion into virtual worlds will be the last exalting moment of a voyagethrough Space and Time, from the infinitely big to the infinitely small. It will pro-vide answers to some of the many questions raised by such intense intellectual stimul-ation and fun.

Virtual Travel AgencyTo Hypothetical Universes

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A comprehensive Business Plan for the Big Bang Project is attached.

SPACEThe discovery centre and interactive exhibition will consist of a complex of buildings offering 7 500 m2 of floor space, with a surrounding area of 14 000 m2 for access and parking space.

Interior SpacesReception 825 m2

Exhibitions 4 160 m2

Conferences 1 180 m2

(of which 290 m2 for sponsors' space)Management/maintenance areas 1 335 m2

Exterior SpacesArrivals 1 000 m2

Public parking 11 400 m2

Staff and services 1 600 m2

INVESTMENTThe total capital costs of the Project amount to 69,9 million Swiss francs,

- of which CERN will contribute in various ways 9,5 million,- and seeks private and public sponsors as its partners to fund the remaining

60,4 million Swiss francs.

Capital Costs in MCHFConstruction & external work 21,8Site (*) 6,5Exhibition displays, movies, etc 24,0Architecture, design, project management 8,4Administration (*) 2,0Scientific input (*) 1,0General reserve, pre-opening cost 3,1Contingency 3,1

(*) contributed by CERN

BIG BANG ProjectBusiness Plan at a Glance

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OPERATIONTogether, CERN and its Partners will constitute a Foundation, which in turn will ap-point a manager and 50 staff to operate Big Bang.A market assessment of the catchment area around Geneva (local population andtourists) estimates at 295’000 per year the number of potential visitors. Admission for single adult will cost 20 Swiss francs (averaged at 15 Swiss francs, taking family tick-ets, school discounts, etc. into account).

A conservative budget for the first year of operation has been calculated on the basisof 250’000 visitors, with a capacity on the Big Bang premises of 500 visitors at a time,spending an average of 2-3 hours.

At that level of frequentation, operating costs are projected at 7,1 million Swiss francsper year (of which 2/3 are for staff ).They can be met (up to 85%) by admission tickets and merchandising, and CERNwill contribute in cash and kind (for water, electricity, maintenance, cleaning, etc.)covering the remaining 15%.

Income in kCHFAdmissions 3 750Merchandising 2 250Various CERN contributions 1 100

Expenditure in kCHFStaff salaries 4 750Marketing 500Maintenance, etc 1 450Energy, cleaning & security 400

TIMETABLEBuilding time: 51 months.Fund-raising: completed by the end of 2002.Opening of Big Bang: end of 2006, to coincide with

commissioning of the Large Hadron Collider.

BIG BANG ProjectBusiness Plan at a Glance

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The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light thingswhich now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky,would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject … And this knowledgewill be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when ourdescendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them… Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will havebeen effaced. Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for everyage to investigate … Nature does not reveal her mysteries once and for all.

Seneca, Natural Questions, Book 7, first century

CERN CopyrightGuy Hentsch & Rolf Landua