MEDIA KITINTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION

IN THE LHC, PROTONS TRAVEL AT 99.9999991 PER CENT OF THE SPEED OF LIGHT — 30 MILLION TIMES FASTER THAN USAIN BOLT.

Hadron Collider: step inside the world’s greatest experiment, the renowned Large Hadron Collider Exhibition from the Science Museum, London, is coming to Brisbane from 9 December 2016.Celebrating the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the award‑winning exhibition recreates the largest scientific experiment ever constructed.

Buried deep under the border between Switzerland and France is CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. It cost approximately £2.6 billion to construct and is the work of 10,000 men and women from across the globe, united in their quest to uncover the fundamental building blocks of our universe.

Operating at the very boundaries of scientific knowledge, it was at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Switzerland in 2012 that the Higgs boson was discovered, capturing the public’s imagination like few other scientific endeavours of the past 50 years.

HADRON COLLIDERStep inside the world’s greatest experiment

LARGE HADRON COLLIDER BACKGROUND AND HISTORYThe Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was named because of its size (it is approximately 27 kilometres in circumference), and because it accelerates protons or ions (which are hadrons) until the particles collide within the machine.The LHC is the biggest and most sophisticated and powerful scientific device ever made, operating at the frontiers of energy, temperature and human ingenuity.

Faster than the speed of light, 100,000 times hotter than the sun, yet at the same time colder than space, it is used by thousands of scientists and engineers around the world to learn more about the tiny building blocks that make up our universe and the laws that govern their behaviour.

Started on 10 September 2008, the LHC consists of a 27 kilometre ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way. Inside the accelerator, two high‑energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light before they are made to collide. The particles are so tiny that the task of making them collide is akin to firing two needles 10 kilometres apart with such precision that they meet halfway.

Our current understanding of the universe is incomplete. The Standard Model of particles and forces summarises our present knowledge of particle physics. The model has been tested by various experiments and it has proven particularly successful in anticipating the existence of previously undiscovered particles. However, it leaves many unsolved questions, which the LHC will help to answer.

Cosmological and astrophysical observations have shown that all of the visible matter accounts for only four per cent of the universe. The search is on for particles or phenomena responsible for dark matter (23 per cent) and dark energy (73 per cent).

The LHC will also help us to investigate the mystery of antimatter. Matter and antimatter must have been produced in the same amounts at the time of the Big Bang, but from what we have observed so far, our universe is made only of matter. Why? The LHC could help to reveal an answer.

©20

07 C

ERN

ABOUT THE HIGGS BOSONHiggs boson: The Final Piece of the PuzzleAccording to the present understanding, there are four fundamental interactions or forces: gravitation, electromagnetism, the weak interaction, and the strong interaction. Scientists think each one of those four fundamental forces has a corresponding carrier particle, or boson, that acts upon matter. That’s a hard concept to grasp. We tend to think of forces as mysterious, ethereal things that straddle the line between existence and nothingness, but in reality, they’re as real as matter itself.

Some physicists have described bosons as weights anchored by mysterious rubber bands to the matter particles that generate them. Using this analogy, we can think of the particles constantly snapping back out of existence in an instant and yet equally capable of getting entangled with other rubber bands attached to other bosons (and imparting force in the process).

Scientists think each of the four fundamental interactions has its own specific bosons. Electromagnetic fields, for instance, depend on the photon to transmit electromagnetic force to matter. Physicists think the Higgs boson might have a similar function — but transfer mass itself.

Can’t matter just inherently have mass without the Higgs boson confusing things? Not according to the Standard Model. But physicists have found a solution. What if all particles have no inherent mass, but instead gain mass by passing through a field? This field, known as a Higgs field, could affect different particles in different ways.

Photons could slide through unaffected, while W and Z bosons would get bogged down with mass. In fact, assuming the Higgs boson exists, everything that has mass gets it by interacting with the all‑powerful Higgs field, which occupies the entire universe. Like the other fields covered by the Standard Model, the Higgs field would need a carrier particle to affect other particles, and that particle is known as the Higgs boson.

On 4 July 2012, scientists working with the LHC announced their discovery of a particle that behaves the way the Higgs boson should behave. The results, while published with a high degree of certainty, are still somewhat preliminary. Some researchers are calling the particle “Higgslike” until the findings — and the data — stand up to more scrutiny. Regardless, this finding could usher in a period of rapid discovery about our universe.

The Higgs boson is named after Peter Higgs, one of six physicists who, in 1964, proposed the mechanism that suggested the existence of such a particle. On 10 December 2013, two of them, Peter Higgs and François Englert, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work and prediction.

On 15 December 2015, two teams of physicists, working independently at CERN, reported preliminary hints of a possible new subatomic particle. If real, the particle could be either a heavier version of a Higgs boson or a graviton.

EXHIBITION SNAPSHOTArrivalsThe first zone is a ‘classic’ museum space where visitors can browse freely before entering the timed dramatic opening. It incorporates objects from the Science Museum’s world‑class historic collections to set the LHC in the context of a long tradition of discovery and challenge.

The Control Room The timed entry section of the exhibition opens with a piece of scripted theatre around an “inciting incident” — an event that sets up the rest of the experience and motivates the visitor journey.

This 13 minute drama takes visitors behind the scenes at the Higgs boson discovery and into the CERN Control Room, conveying the sheer excitement of working on the LHC and priming the visitor to engage with the rest of the exhibition. It introduces visitors to some key concepts in particle physics and the way the LHC operates. Most importantly, it gets to the core of what the LHC is about: curiosity, passion and understanding our world.

Inside the LHC: Beam Start, Acceleration, SteeringLeaving the ‘control room’, visitors are virtually transported into CERN and are free to explore the exhibition at their own pace. Hyperreal sets take people from the alien and highly controlled environment of the experimental areas to the more relaxed and familiar aboveground world of CERN offices.

Having been given an overview of the beam journey in the control room, visitors now delve deeper into the LHC. They encounter real objects from CERN. These objects are set in the environments in which they operate, including a small part of the 27 kilometre tunnel that houses the collider.

A sense of place is created through a combination of stage sets, graphics, video and audio. The objects are brought to life and explained by fullsize projections of real scientists and engineers from CERN, who bring a human element to the story and give visitors an understanding of the huge engineering and technical challenges that were overcome to build the LHC.

Visitors pass through three stages of the beam journey: from the injection of protons into the collider, acceleration of the beams towards the speed of light, to the steering of the beams around the ring before they are brought into collision.

CollisionHere visitors are immersed in a beautiful visual representation of a collision, producing a shower of new particles that seem to flow through the space. This experience is the place where the extremes of scale are conveyed: both the infinitesimal world of invisible particles and the enormous machines that are used to detect them. This purely audio‑visual experience does not use spoken or written words.

DetectorsVisitors now encounter objects from the four huge LHC detectors, from incredibly precise and delicate silicon detector modules from the heart of the LHC experiment to dense crystals of lead and tungsten from the inner regions of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector.

This area of the exhibition is the most rich in terms of objects and content. The detector objects are brought to life by audio interviews with the real physicists who created and use them, with displays set up like a physicist’s workbench.

DiscoveryThe final section explores how data from the LHC detectors is analysed by physicists all over the world in their search for new knowledge. The LHC’s most famous discovery so far, the Higgs boson, is explored in an office setting, illustrating the 24 hour lifestyle of data analysis and referring back to the opening drama.

Finding the Higgs boson is only the beginning and there are many more questions to explore. The last room of the exhibition takes visitors out of CERN and into a more abstract space, where they meet scientists from around the world and explore mysterious topics such as antimatter and hidden dimensions.

Highlight objectA two tonne, 2.5 metre tall copper cavity used to accelerate beams of electrons and positrons in the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider.

With its 27 kilometre circumference, the LEP collider was – and still is – the largest electron‑positron accelerator ever built. LEP was commissioned in 1989. During 11 years of research, LEP’s experiments provided a detailed study of the electroweak interaction. LEP was closed down in November 2000 to make way for the construction of the Large Hadron Collider in the same tunnel.

THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER: FACTS AND FIGURESConstruction• The LHC is the largest machine in

the world and cost approximately £2.6 billion to construct. Thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians spent decades planning and building the LHC, which continues to operate at the very boundaries of scientific knowledge. Scientists working on the ATLAS experiment come from every continent in the world, except Antarctica.

• When the 27 kilometre long circular tunnel was excavated, between Lake Geneva and the Jura mountain range in Switzerland, the two ends met up to within one centimetre.

• The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector uses a huge solenoid magnet to bend the paths of particles from collisions in the LHC. The CMS magnet system contains about 10,000 tonnes of iron — more iron than in the Eiffel Tower.

Size and scale• The deepest point of the LHC

is 175 metres below ground. In comparison, the deepest point of Brisbane’s Clem7 Tunnel is 60 metres below ground.

• At 27 kilometres long, the distance around the world’s largest particle accelerator is longer than Brisbane’s network of busways (25 kilometres).

• At 7,000 tonnes the ATLAS detector at the LHC weighs more than 414 Brisbane City Council buses.

• Each of the 6,000–9,000 superconducting filaments of niobium–titanium in the cable produced for the LHC is about 0.007 millimetres thick — about 10 times thinner than a normal human hair. If you added all the filaments together they would stretch to the sun and back six times with enough left over for about 150 trips to the moon.

Speed• In the LHC, protons travel at

99.9999991 per cent of the speed of light. This is equivalent to:

• 299,792,455 metres per second

• 1,079,252,839 kilometres per hour (i.e. 1 billion kilometres per hour)

• 670,616,623 miles per hour

• 30 million times faster than Usain Bolt.

• In the time you read this line a particle in the LHC could have travelled around the world 30 times.

• 600 million collisions occur per second in the LHC.

• A beam might circulate for 10 hours, travelling more than 10 billion kilometres – enough to get to the planet Neptune and back again.

• At near light‑speed, a proton in the LHC will make 11,245 circuits every second.

• Each beam will consist of nearly 3,000 bunches of particles and each bunch will contain as many as 100 billion particles. The particles are so tiny that the chance of any two colliding is very small. When the bunches cross, there will be a maximum of about 20 collisions between 200 billion particles. Bunches will cross on average about 30 million times per second, so the LHC will generate up to 600 million particle collisions per second.

Temperature• The LHC is colder than the void of

space and 100,000 times hotter than the sun.

• The LHC magnets are at ‑271.3 degrees Celsius — colder than deep space — one of the coldest places in the universe.

• In addition to being the world’s largest particle accelerator, just one‑eighth of its cryogenic distribution system would qualify as the world’s largest fridge.

• Collisions in the LHC generate temperatures more than 100,000 times hotter than the centre of the sun, or 15 billion times hotter than a cup of coffee.

• At full energy, each of the two proton beams in the LHC will have a total energy equivalent to a 400 tonne train travelling at 150 kilometres per hour. This is enough energy to melt 500 kilograms of copper.

• The pressure in the beam pipes of the LHC will be about ten times lower than on the moon and the LHC beam pipes are emptier than the vacuum of space.

Data• The most powerful supercomputer

system in the world was built to analyse the data generated by the LHC. It’s called the Grid and is formed from tens of thousands of interconnected computers scattered around the world.

• The LHC produces 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) of data per year – the equivalent to a stack of CDs 20 kilometres tall.

• The data recorded by each of the big experiments at the LHC will fill around 100,000 dual‑layer DVDs every year.

© 2009-2016 CERN

PUBLIC PROGRAMSCollider – the making of an exhibition Alison Boyle, co‑curator of the exhibition Hadron Collider: step inside the world’s greatest experiment, will give a behind‑the‑scenes look at the making of the exhibition with CERN. Alison is the Keeper of Science Collections for the Science Museum, London.

Date: Saturday 10 December 2016

Time: 11am and 1.30pm (NB. to accommodate demand the same lecture will be delivered twice)

Cost: Free talk. No booking required. Limited seats available.

After Darks Are you ready to particle? Explore the museum after hours and enjoy Hadron Collider‑related talks, demonstrations and films, as well as live music and entry to the exhibition.

Date: Friday 9 December 2016, Friday 3 February 2017, Friday 3 March 2017

Time: 5.30pm – 9.00pm

Cost: $21

18+ event

For more information and tickets visit www.qm.qld.gov.au

World Science Festival BrisbaneHadron Collider: step inside the world’s greatest experiment will be open throughout the World Science Festival Brisbane with a range of complementary events and activities on offer.

Date: Wednesday 22 – Sunday 26 March 2017

Time: 9:30am – 5pm

Cost: $15 exhibition tickets. Other activities complimentary.

World Science Festival Brisbane 2017 Special EventCollision: A Walk Through The World of Hadron

Explore the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest and most powerful particle accelerator, operated by the CERN consortium in Geneva, Switzerland. Join us for a special event featuring a discussion by a panel of international guests including Dr Harry Cliff, particle physicist and in‑house physicist and curator of the Hadron Collider exhibition, Science Museum, London.

The discussion will be followed by an exclusive tour of the Hadron Collider exhibition at Queensland Museum, led by our special international guests.

Date: Saturday 25 March 2017

Time: 4 – 5pm

Cost: adults $55, concession $50

For more information and tickets visit www.worldsciencefestival.com.au

© 2

014

CERN

ABOUTAbout Queensland Museum NetworkQueensland Museum Network (QMN) is the keeping place for the State Collection of 1.2 million objects and specimens, valued at more than $487 million, and approximately 14 million research collection items. For more than 150 years Queensland Museum Network has grown alongside Queensland to inspire, enrich and empower communities.

About CERNCERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, is the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its member states are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Romania and Israel. Serbia is an associate member in the pre‑stage to membership. India, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have observer status.

About Science Museum London and Exhibition Curators (Exhibition Developer)As the home of human ingenuity, the Science Museum’s world‑class collection forms an enduring record of scientific, technological and medical achievements from across the globe. Welcoming more than 3 million visitors a year, the Museum aims to make sense of the science that shapes our lives, inspiring visitors with iconic objects, award‑winning exhibitions and incredible stories of scientific achievement.

About Winton Capitol Management (International Tour Partner)Winton Capital Management is a leading global alternative investment company and a world leader in financial mathematics and empirical scientific research into financial markets. The company, founded in 1997, now employs some 280 people, including 120 scientists, at research campuses in London, Oxford, Zurich and Hong Kong.

About QGC (Presenting Partner)QGC is the Australian business of Shell, and the world’s first producer of LNG from natural gas sourced from coal seams. We are one of Australia’s leading natural gas explorers and producers, focused on developing Queensland’s world‑class gas reserves for supply to the domestic market and international customers.

We work collaboratively with local communities, landholders, government, business and other important stakeholders to ensure our operations provide broad community benefits, create jobs and business opportunities as we explore and develop gas reserves.

About QGC: Future Makers PartnershipQGC and the Queensland Museum Network have entered into a three‑year partnership which focuses on boosting opportunities in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) with a focus on four main areas: school programs, teacher professional development, public engagement and research. Future Makers was developed in response to evidence showing the number of Australian school students participating in STEM subjects is declining significantly.

The unique and innovative program aims to create a whole‑of‑life approach to STEM education by working directly with students, providing professional development for teachers and engaging with communities.

ATLA

S Ex

peri

men

t ©

201

4 CE

RN

SPOKESPEOPLEAlexander Hayward, Director, Collections, Research and Lifelong Learning, Queensland Museum NetworkAlexander Hayward has been a curator, technology historian and science communicator for over three decades. His professional experience includes the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, the Science Museum in London, National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh, and since June 2015, Director of Collections, Research and Lifelong Learning with Queensland Museum Network (QMN). At QMN he leads the teams responsible for collections development, research and lifelong learning programs across the five campuses.

In 2013, whilst working at the National Museum of Scotland, Alex twice visited CERN in connection with the preparation of a new display in Edinburgh that showed the story of the search for the Higgs boson. These visits included travelling underground to see the Large Hadron Collider first hand.

Alex has lectured and published on the history of technology and the conservation and restoration of historic machinery. He has been an Expert Advisor for the UK Heritage Lottery Fund, specialising in historic transport. Alex was the founding chair of the Scottish Transport and Industry Collections Knowledge (STICK) Network, a member of council of Newcomen: the international society for the history of engineering and technology, and a Vice President of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts (Science and Technology) between 2011 and 2014.

He is currently a member of the Queensland committee of Engineering Heritage Australia, and the Queensland Government Interdepartmental Working Group on State Science Collections.

Suzanne Miller, CEO and Director, Queensland Museum NetworkSuzanne commenced as CEO of the Queensland Museum Network and Director of the Queensland Museum in July 2013, after six years leading the South Australia Museum as Director. Previously, the Edinburgh native spent 12 years with National Museums Scotland, latterly as Keeper of Natural Sciences. She was also an Honorary Research Fellow in Earth Sciences with the University of Aberdeen and a Lecturer in Earth Sciences with the Open University. From December 2016, Suzanne has also taken on the role of Queensland Chief Scientist.

Suzanne is a Fellow of the Geological Society of London; Fellow of the Mineralogical Society; Fellow of the Royal Society of South Australia; Fellow of the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy; Fellow of the Geological Society of Australia; and Fellow of the Queensland Academy of Arts and Science.

She is an Honorary Professor of The University of Queensland and is also Deputy Chair and the Australian Representative on the Board of Scientific Collections International (an OECD Global Science Forum initiative); and a member of the National Research Infrastructure Roadmap Expert Working Group; Chair of the Council of Australasian Museum Directors; the Cooperative Research Centres Committee; and the National Cultural Heritage Committee.

Alison Boyle, Keeper of Science Collections, Science Museum, LondonAlison Boyle is Keeper of Science Collections at the Science Museum, London. She has overall responsibility for the Museum’s physical sciences collections, which span from the 10th century to the present day, and particularly focuses on physics and astronomy. She is working towards a PhD from University College London, on museum practices of collecting and displaying physics throughout the 20th century. She is lead curator of Collider, currently on international tour and winner of the 2014 Dibner Award for Excellence in Museum Exhibits. Current projects for the Science Museum include a permanent gallery on instrument‑making in 17th and 18th century London, and a temporary exhibition on the Sun.

©20

07 C

ERN

IMAGES FOR MEDIA USEA selection of object images from the exhibition is available on dropbox for media use, and additional images can be sourced on request.https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3seex5jsxt9k4d4/AABNQYYxCXouwPmVLQU1901Da?dl=0

Supplied photo credits must accompany publication.

Further images available at: http://press.cern/multimedia/photos‑images

© 2

013

CERN

Timed ticketingHadron Collider is a timed ticketed experience. Entry times commence at 9.40am daily, then then at 20 minute intervals through to 4pm.

You must arrive 10 minutes before your scheduled ticket time. For example if your ticket time is 10am you need to arrive at the museum no later than 9.50am.

Exhibition entry is timed so that we can manage the flow of visitors through the 15 minute video screening at the beginning of the exhibition and to ensure the exhibition doesn’t get too crowded. Once inside, you are welcome to stay as long as you like until museum closing at 5pm daily. Please note there are no pass outs from the exhibition.

Tickets:

Adult $15

Concession $13.50

Child (3-15 years) $12

Family (2A + 2Ch) $45

Adult Group 10+ $13.50

Schools 10+ $10

Season Passes nil

After Dark $21

Children under 3 free

Megadeal tickets:

Megadeal tickets offer 25% off the entry price of a combined entry ticket to Sciencentre and the Hadron Collider: step inside the world’s greatest experiment exhibition.

Adult Sciencentre Megadeal $24

Concession Sciencentre Megadeal $20

Child Sciencentre Megadeal $18 (3-15 years)

Family Science Centre Megadeal $65 (2A + 2Ch)

Children under 3 free

*NB Megadeal blackout dates apply: 22 March – 26 March 2017

Hadron Collider: step inside the world’s greatest experiment is a temporary exhibition on level 3 of the Queensland Museum & Sciencentre.

Queensland Museum & Sciencentre Cnr Grey and Melbourne Streets, South Brisbane

Teacher Preview Offer Teachers may preview the exhibition free of charge from 9–24 December 2016.

Join us for a unique opportunity to assess ways this exhibition can best meet the needs of your students. Present your name, contact details and proof of current teacher registration at the exhibition entry on level 3. Complimentary admission applies to teachers only, but this offer may accompany ticketed patrons.

For more information and tickets visit www.qm.qld.gov.au/collider

MEDIA ENQUIRIESChristine Robertsonmedia@qm.qld.gov.au (07) 3840 7789 0417 741 710

Heidi Jonesmedia@qm.qld.gov.au (07) 3842 9388 0434 565 852

Connect with the Queensland Museumfacebook.com/qldmuseum Twitter: @qldmuseum Instagram: qldmuseum #qldmuseum #hadroncollider www.qm.qld.gov.au

COVER IMAGE ©2007 CERN