Large Hadron Collider

Opening in autumn 2013, an exhibition about the Large Hadron Collider will transport visitors to one of the great scientific and engineering endeavours of our time: CERN in Geneva. The Museum is collaborating will designers and theatrical experts to create an experience which immerses visitors in the great intellectual adventure on the planet.

In the Large Hadron Collider (a giant particle collider) scientists and engineers work at the extremes of temperature, vacuum and energy to recreate conditions not seen since just after the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago.

The exhibition will give visitors a close-up look at remarkable examples of CERN engineering, from the bottle of hydrogen gas that feeds the great machine, to its vast dipole magnets. There will be various historic objects on display from the museum's world-leading collections, including JJ Thomson's apparatus which led to the discovery of the electron, and the accelerator Cockcroft and Walton used to first split the atom.