Category Archives: Exhibitions

LHC. Camera. Action! (part 1)

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Dr. Harry Cliff, a Physicist working on the LHCb experiment and the first Science Museum Fellow of Modern Science, writes about his work on Collider, a new Science Museum exhibition opening in November 2013.

In the past year, I’ve become a regular passenger on the evening flight from Gatwick to Geneva, home of CERN and the mighty Large Hadron Collider.  I think I could recite Easyjet’s pre-recorded safety announcement pretty much word-for-word if pushed. But this was a rather special trip, as I was visiting CERN perhaps for the last time on museum business.

I was accompanied by a team with a dazzling array of skills. Creative mastermind Pippa Nissen had marshalled exhibition designers, graphic designers, a sound artist, an animator, a camera technician and a radio producer. Not to mention our video designer, Finn Ross, fresh from his win at the Olivier Awards, and the inevitable after-party hangover. And me, a quantum superposition of particle physicist, curator and travel rep.

Our mission was to capture the essence of CERN so that it can be (almost literally) recreated in the Science Museum’s upcoming exhibition, Collider. All this material was to be gathered in just three days, using only cameras, microphones and the minds of our design team.

Day 1, Wednesday

One does not simply walk into CERN. Its gates are guarded by unfailingly helpful, though rather formidable, security personnel and to gain access you must produce a CERN ID card or a visitor pass.

CERN security gate.

CERN security gate. Image credit: Science Museum

We had rather brilliantly chosen the 1st of May as our day to arrive, a national holiday in Switzerland, meaning the reception where we would normally collect our passes was closed. I had arranged for them to be left with the security guard at the main gate, but conveying this to him proved a challenge in my halting GCSE French. Finally, with a bit of gesticulating and some help from our more linguistically capable graphic designer, we located the passes and stepped across the threshold into the world’s largest physics laboratory.

CERN is the size of a medium-sized town, spread across several sites, the largest of which straddles the border between the Swiss suburb of Meyrin and the French village of St-Genis-Pouilly. The lab grew up organically from its beginnings in the 1950s and is a peculiar hodgepodge of office buildings, warehouses and laboratories. CERN’s rather shabby above ground stands in stark contrast to the shining machines that inhabit its subterranean spaces. As far as is possible, the money goes underground, spent on CERN’s reason for being: exploring the unknown regions of the quantum world.

Our job on day one, however, was to explore CERN’s above ground world. The first few hours were spent photographing the exteriors of buildings to act as backdrops in the exhibition. There was a particular warehouse door, in varying shades of rust and faded blue, that really caught the team’s attention. It will take me a while to forget the image of the design team gathered around it while Finn took high-res shots with his £20k camera. That’s designers for you I suppose.

The long beige corridors of CERN's Building 2. Image credit: Science Museum

The long beige corridors of CERN’s Building 2. Image credit: Science Museum

Then we ventured into the star of the show, the enigmatic Building 2, a 1970s block that houses a large number of institute offices. Along its long beige corridors you find offices of universities from all over the world, including the room where Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and my own home-away-from-home, the Cambridge LHCb office. We spent a happy afternoon photographing the office doors, each with their own personal details that do more than any museum text panel could in getting across just how international a place CERN is. We owe a particular debt of thanks to a PhD student from Bristol, in on a holiday to work on her thesis, who obligingly allowed us barge into her office to take photographs.

Meanwhile our sound designer was busily recording the soundscape of CERN from the clanging of doors and the echo of footsteps on lino to the hum of electrical equipment. Once we had recorded enough material to rebuild Building 2 in its entirety should any calamity befall it, we made a brisk trip around nearby parts of the lab, taking in the main auditorium where the discovery of the Higgs boson was announced to the world, and a series of labs and warehouses including the LEIR accelerator ring, the machine responsible producing beams of lead ions for our muse, the Large Hadron Collider.

But after all that, we had only scratched the surface of the sprawling laboratory. The next day it would be time to go underground…

Science Museum launches Britain’s first official astronaut

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By Roger Highfield and Doug Millard. Roger Highfield is Director of External Affairs at the Science Museum Group. Doug Millard is Deputy Keeper Technologies & Engineering and is currently leading on content for a major new exhibition of Russian space exploration opening in 2014.

The Science Museum has welcomed many astronauts and cosmonauts over the years and each time our visitors have been spellbound. Today, we witnessed the announcement of Briton Tim Peake’s mission to visit the International Space Station, ISS.

Tim Peake will be the first British astronaut to visit the International Space Station.

Tim Peake will be the first British astronaut to visit the International Space Station. Image: BIS

Peake (who tweets as @astro_timpeake), will join Expedition 46 to the ISS, and will be carried aloft by a Soyuz mission in November 2015.

His selection by the European Space Agency was announced to the world’s media in the Science Museum’s IMAX at an event introduced by Director Ian Blatchford.

Ian Blatchford, Science Museum Director (l) welcomes Tim Peake and Science Minister David Willetts (r) to the Museum. Image: Science Museum

Ian Blatchford, Science Museum Director (l) welcomes Tim Peake and Science Minister David Willetts (r) to the Museum. Image: Science Museum

Peake, who is based in the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, said  that he is ”absolutely delighted” and saw the mission as the culmination of everything he had worked for during his  career, though he admitted that he had misgivings about the disruption caused by moving his family – he has two young sons – to Houston.

However, he was not concerned about the risks of the mission, since his future career was ‘probably safer’ than past career as helicopter test pilot.

His tasks once in orbit will include helping to maintain the space station, operating its robotic arm and carrying out science experiments in Esa’s Columbus laboratory module, which is attached to the front of the 400-ton ISS complex.

Backdropped by a colourful Earth, this full view of the International Space Station was photographed from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

Backdropped by a colourful Earth, this full view of the International Space Station was photographed from the Space Shuttle Discovery. Credit: NASA/SSPL

Peake said that he hoped there would be space biomedicine experiments and that the UK scientific community would rise to the opportunities presented by microgravity experiments.

“Major Tim” told the press conference that in preparation for this challenge he had lived in a Sardinian cave for a week, flew on what is popularly known as a ‘vomit comet’, has spent 12 days in Nasa’s Extreme Environment Mission Operations, an underwater base, and he has undergone training with Russian and American spacesuits so he will also be able to perform a spacewalk.

The recently returned ISS commander, Canadian Chris Hadfield, attracted a big following for his tweets, videos and songs from the platform which Peake said built a worldwide audience. However, Peake dashed any hopes of a pop video by admitting: ‘I do play the guitar but very badly.’

Peake hails from Chichester, and is the “first official British astronaut” for the European Space Agency, selected from 8000 candidates. Previous UK-born individuals who have gone into orbit have done so either through the US space agency (Nasa) as American citizens or on independent ventures organised with the assistance of the Russian space agency.

Tim Peake answers questions from the press at the Science Museum.

Tim Peake answers questions from the press at the Science Museum. Image: Science Museum

Thomas Reiter, a former astronaut and Director of ESA’s Directorate of Human Spaceflight and Operations, congratulated Peake ‘It is a remarkable moment for your country. You all can be proud of Timothy.’ And Dr David Parker of the UK Space Agency said nothing inspires like human explorers at the final frontier.

David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science, said that this mission is part of effort to rebalance the economy – the UK space industry is worth £9.1 billion to the economy – and pointed out that the space sector is growing by 8 per cent each year.

He added that the mission underlined the inspirational values of space – the ‘Apollo effect’ – and will encourage more young people to take up STEM (science, technology and maths) subjects at schools and universities. ‘I have high hopes it will interest a generation of students in science and technology.’

The minister said that the objects in the Science Museum are a reminder of the UK’s distinguished history in space exploration and that he is now looking into a competition for schools based on the mission to the ISS.

Tim Peake pictured with a space suit from the Exploring Space gallery. Image: Science Museum

Tim Peake pictured with a space suit from the Exploring Space gallery. Image: Science Museum

Prime Minister, David Cameron, commented:  “This is a momentous day, not just for Tim Peake but for Great Britain. Tim was picked for this historic role from over 8,000 applicants from around the world. I am sure he will do us proud.”

Helen Sharman was the first Briton to go into space in 1991 in a joint venture between a number of UK companies and the Soviet government and spent a week at the Mir space station.

Sharman spoke at a recent event at the museum to celebrate International Women’s Day. The museum has her space suit on display and, only a few weeks ago, she stood before her suit as she told leading figures in drama and theatre about her experiences in orbit.

The most experienced UK-born astronaut is Nasa’s Michael Foale, who completed long-duration missions to both the ISS and Mir.

Shackleton’s Man Goes South

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Guest post by author Tony White, who writes about his new novel Shackleton’s Man Goes South, the Science Museum’s 2013 Atmosphere commission. Download the novel here.

I’m really excited that the moment you turn the corner from the lifts on the 2nd floor of the Science Museum you get a clear view right across the Atmosphere Gallery to a large logo on the opposite wall, twenty-feet high, which seems to be melting or dripping down the wall but which still recognisably spells out the words ‘Shackleton’s Man Goes South’. This is the title of my novel which has just been published by the Science Museum, the first novel that the Museum have ever published!

Beneath this large wall graphic you will find a touch screen where you can email yourself a free ebook of Shackleton’s Man Goes South, and there is a special display showing some of the scientific and literary inspirations behind the novel. (Listen to an audio extract. Download the novel here until 24 July.)

Shackleton's Man Goes South

Shackleton’s Man Goes South display in the Atmosphere gallery. Image: Science Museum

The novel was inspired by two things: a science fiction short story warning of climate change that was written on Antarctica in 1911 by a polar explorer and atmospheric scientist called George Clarke Simpson, and secondly by silent black and white film of Antarctica, shot during Sir Ernest Shackleton’s heroic expedition of 1914-16; the first moving images of Antarctica that most people at the time had ever seen.

Polar explorer and atmospheric scientist George Clarke Simpson.

Polar explorer and atmospheric scientist George Clarke Simpson. Credit: Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge

My novel fuses these ideas to tell a new story about Emily and her daughter Jenny, climate change refugees who are fleeing to Antarctica instead of from it as Shackleton had done, in a hot world rather than a cold one, but a world in which the Shackleton story has become a founding myth of the new continent, much as the story of Christopher Columbus gave symbolic value to historical migration to the United States of America.

I wanted to try and communicate some of these ideas in the Shackleton’s Man Goes South logo, so I approached leading British designer Jake Tilson, who is well known for his work with the likes of Ian Dury and the Blockheads and many others.

Shackleton's Man book cover

Shackleton’s Man book cover

In our early conversations Jake and I both wanted to relate the logo to polar-themed books and films of the Shackleton era, so he created an Art Nouveau-style typeface and used this to spell out the title of the novel, before using computer software to ‘morph’ the lettering, as if it were melting and dripping down the page: ‘going south’ as the title suggests. Normally one associates the name of Shackleton with snow and ice, with cold colours such as pale blues or white, but we wanted to  reflect the kind of colouring that is used on maps to communicate global temperature increases. Our logo is spelt out in bold yellow, and as it melts the logo changes subtly to a warmer orange.

Jake Tilson’s logo for Shackleton’s Man Goes South is a crucial part of the designs for both the novel and the Atmosphere Gallery display. It has been a huge privilege to work with a great British designer like Jake Tilson. I hope that his melting logo for Shackleton’s Man Goes South will intrigue Science Museum visitors, as well as giving some clues about my book and the story it contains.

A hundred years of the quantum atom

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Alice Lighton, content developer for our Collider exhibition, writes about the history of quantum physics. Colider: step inside the world’s greatest experiment opens in November 2013 with a behind-the-scenes look at the famous CERN particle physics laboratory. 

A few years ago, a friend asked a question that took me somewhat by surprise. “Alice,” he said, “is quantum physics right, or is it just a theory?”

At the time I was in the midst of a physics degree, so my initial response was “I hope so!” Quantum physics matches up to experiment extraordinarily well – it is often called the most accurate theory ever. But the question, and subsequent conversation, made me realise how little many people know about the subject, despite its profound impact on modern life and the way we think about the universe.

This year is the centenary of the publication of one of the theories that laid the foundation for our understanding of matter in terms of quanta – packets of energy. According to quantum mechanics, light is not a wave, but lump of energy called photons. Max Planck came up with the idea at the end of the 19th Century, though he considered his light ‘quanta’ a useful model, rather than reality.

Niels Bohr

Niels Bohr, one of the founders of modern physics.

One hundred years ago, in 1913, the young Danish researcher Niels Bohr sent a paper to the Philosophical Magazine in London that used these quanta to solve a serious problem with theories about the atom. At the time, scientists thought the atom was like a solar systems; electrons orbit a nucleus of protons and neutrons. But anything that moves in a circle gradually slowly radiates energy, and so moves closer to the centre of orbit. Eventually, electrons should fall into the nucleus of the atom.

But they blatantly don’t, otherwise everything in the Universe would collapse, and we wouldn’t exist. Bohr proposed that electrons could only sit in discrete orbits or distances from the nucleus – and therefore when electrons change orbit transitions between orbits emit only emit energy in discrete packets (quanta), not gradually. The electrons therefore stay put in their orbits, and don’t fall into the nucleus of the atom.

A hydrogen atom is made from one electron orbiting a proton. Photo credit: flickr/Ludie Cochrane

Bohr was the first to show that packets of energy could successfully explain and predict the behaviour of atoms, the stuff that makes up you and me. His results were only approximately correct, but a big improvement of previous theories.

Generations of scientists have built on Bohr’s insight to understand and create the modern world. When my friend asked whether quantum physics worked, I pointed at his laptop. Computers, nanotechnology, and the Large Hadron Collider owe their existence to the physics that began with Bohr’s generation.

The CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider tries to work out the rules governing the sub-atomic world. Photo credit: CERN

Bohr’s original papers are clear and comprehensible, a beautiful read for physicists. The mathematics involves nothing more difficult than multiplication and division, yet the philosophical implications are immense. Max Planck never fully accepted quantum physics; neither did Albert Einstein, despite winning a Nobel Prize for his work on the subject.

Bohr also won a Nobel Prize for his quantum theory, but his work did not stop. He founded the Niels Bohr Institute, a centre of theoretical physics in Copenhagen, worked on the Manhattan Project developing the atomic bomb, and continued to make contributions to quantum mechanics.

And he has a lovely link to the exhibition I’m currently working on, about the Large Hadron Collider. Bohr was influential in the founding of CERN, the Geneva laboratory that is home to the LHC. If he had his way, the LHC would be in Denmark, but other scientists objected – Northern Europe was too cloudy, and had too few ski resorts, for Italian tastes.

Strange objects give a feel for the origins of X-ray crystallography

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A guest post by Stephen Curry, professor of structural biology at Imperial College.

The things and objects of history are important because they provide a tangible connection to the past. Seeing, or better yet holding and touching, the stuff that generations now dead made and worked with enlivens history, shucking us from the present and its endless clamour for our attention.

The Hidden Structures exhibition at the Science Museum trips us into the history of X-ray crystallography with a small but intriguing display of objects from the 1940s through to the 1970s. The exhibition commemorates the centenary of the development of the technique, by the father and son team of William and Lawrence Bragg who figured out how the scattering of X-rays by crystals could be analysed to reveal the atomic and molecular arrangements within, providing a vista of the structure of matter that had never been seen before.

The Braggs first applied the technique in 1913 to show how the patterns of X-rays diffracted onto photographic plates by table salt — sodium chloride — could be interpreted to reveal the organisation of the two atoms within its crystals. It was apparent from the beginning that the method was applicable to anything that could be induced to crystallise, even the most complex molecules of chemistry and biology. Soon structures composed of tens or hundreds or even thousands of atoms were emerging from UK labs, which established itself at the forefront of the technique thanks in no small part to the inspirational leadership of the younger Bragg.

Hidden Structures 1The first protein structures; left to right — myoglobin, perspex stack of electron density, haemoglobin

The artefacts in the Hidden Structures display come mainly from the first bloom of chemical and biological crystallography; there is Dorothy Hodgkin’s ball-and-stick model of penicillin, John Kendrew’s wormy brown representation of the oxygen-storage protein, myoglobin, Max Perutz’s black and white slabbed structure of haemoglobin, the oxygen-transporter from human blood, and in pride of place, Hodgkin’s huge model of the atomic structure of insulin.

These scientists had to be very hands-on at all stages of their work — growing crystals, carefully measuring X-ray diffraction patterns recorded on photographs, and printing out the electron density maps produced by their analysis. These three-dimensional maps (there is one for haemoglobin in the display, printed in sections on stacked sheets of perspex) show where the electrons are concentrated, so defining the positions of the atoms. The early models simply depict the contours of these maps and give the overall form of the protein molecule. Coming some years after X-rays had unveiled the elegant double-helix of DNA, their crude irregularity was at first a disappointment: “hideous and visceral” wrote Perutz.

But the resolving power of X-rays soon improved and those early crystallographers had to swap plastic and plasticene for intricate assemblies of rods, each representing a bond between two atoms, that were put together with loving attention to detail. Hodgkin’s insulin model from the early 1960s may not be beautiful, but it is mesmerising — and hugely informative.

Hidden Structures 2Hodgkin’s atomic structures: left, insulin; right, penicillin.

X-ray crystallography continues apace. Thousands of protein structures have been solved, providing a detailed understanding of the workings of biology at the molecular level. We see clearly now not just how hormones like insulin work, or how haemoglobin picks up and drops off its cargo of oxygen, but also how DNA is synthesised and decoded, how ion channels enable the transmission of nerve signals, how the immune system fights off infection. No pharmaceutical company works blind in the 21st Century; all use X-ray crystallography to reveal the molecular targets of therapy, whether from a virus or bacteria or a cancerous cell, as part of the quest for new drugs and vaccines.

But all the work of recording and analysing data and building models has now migrated to computers. For sure this has greatly accelerated the pace of research and discovery, but there are no more photographs or stacks of electron density or models made of stuff for future generations to pick up and wonder at. All the more reason therefore to cherish the crystallographic arcana on show at the Science Museum.

Stephen Curry is a professor of structural biology at Imperial College. He writes regularly about science at the Reciprocal Space and Occam’s Corner blogs.

An artists impression of the immersive collision experience in the Collider exhibition. Image credit: Science Museum / Nissen Richards Studio

Science Museum visitors to step into the greatest experiment on Earth

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By Roger Highfield, Director of External Affairs at the Science Museum Group

Plans are unveiled today for the biggest-ever exhibition in the UK to focus on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s greatest scientific experiment, where a 10,000 strong international army of scientists and engineers is exploring the fundamental building blocks of the universe, from the discovery of the Higgs particle to the nature of antimatter.

The King’s College theoretician John Ellis has suggested that the LHC, the most compelling scientific endeavour so far of the 21st century, could inspire a generation in the same way that the Apollo adventure did in the 1960s. That is precisely why the Science Museum is bringing the LHC to the public in its new Collider exhibition, opening in November 2013. Visitors will be transported right into the heart of the 27 km circumference machine – that straddles the border between Switzerland and France – with the help of an award-winning creative team including Nissen Richards Studio, playwright Michael Wynne and video artist Finn Ross.

An artists impression of the immersive collision experience in the Collider exhibition. Image credit: Science Museum / Nissen Richards Studio

An artists impression of the immersive collision experience in the Collider exhibition. Image credit: Science Museum / Nissen Richards Studio

The immersive exhibition, the result of a unique collaboration with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, will blend theatre, video and sound art, taking visitors to the site of the LHC where they can explore the Control Room and a huge underground detector cavern, meet ‘virtual’ scientists and engineers and examine objects up-close. “I particularly like the fresh, theatrical approach the Museum is taking to bringing the drama and excitement of cutting-edge science to the public,” said CERN Director General, Rolf Heuer.

View of the LHC tunnel. Image credit: CERN

View of the LHC tunnel. Image credit: CERN

For the first time, visitors can get up close with exclusive access to part of the large 15-metre magnets that steer the particle beam, and elements from each of the LHC’s ‘eyes’, four giant detectors housed in caverns around the machine, notably CMS and ATLAS, where collisions take place. They will also be able to follow the story of sub-atomic exploration through the Museum’s collections – on display will be J.J. Thomson’s apparatus which led him to the discovery of the electron in 1897, and the accelerator used by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton to split the atom in 1932.

JJ Thomson (1856-1940) at work. Image credit: Science Museum / Science & Society Picture Library

JJ Thomson (1856-1940) at work. Image credit: Science Museum / Science & Society Picture Library

When in operation, trillions of protons race around the LHC accelerator ring 11,245 times a second, travelling at 99.9999991% the speed of light. Evidence for a Higgs-like particle was found in the aftermath of the resulting collisions between protons.

Named after the British physicist Peter Higgs who postulated its existence more than half a century ago, and who will help launch the new exhibition with other leading figures, the particle is the final piece of the Standard Model, a framework of theory developed in the late 20th century that describes the interactions of all known subatomic particles and forces, with the exception of gravity.

The highlight of the exhibition, according to Alison Boyle, the Science Museum’s curator of modern physics, will be a 360-degree projection taking in both extremes of the scale of the LHC. ‘We are going to take our visitors from an enormous experiment cavern to the very heart of a proton collision.

Artist's impression of the immersive detector experience. Image credit: Science Museum / Nissen Richards Studio

Artist’s impression of the immersive detector experience. Image credit: Science Museum / Nissen Richards Studio

Key figures from CERN, such as Professor Heuer, attended a gala ceremony held last month by the Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation at the Geneva International Conference Centre, hosted by Hollywood actor and science enthusiast Morgan Freeman with performances by singer Sarah Brightman and Russian pianist Denis Matsuev. Freeman mused that it was “a bit like the Oscars” and made the best joke of the night when referring to complaints about physicists ‘playing god’: “I have done it twice and I don’t see the problem.’

Yuri Milner, the Russian theoretical physicist turned internet entrepreneur who backs the prizes through his Milner Foundation, said it “celebrates what is possible in humanity’s quest to understand the deepest questions of the universe.”

The evening celebrated two Special Fundamental Physics Prizes of $3,000,000, one for Prof Stephen Hawking, who himself has been the subject of a special exhibition here at the Science Museum, for his discovery of Hawking radiation from black holes, and his deep contributions to quantum gravity and quantum features of the early universe, based on his efforts to combine theories of the very big (general relativity) with the very small (quantum theory). In his acceptance speech, Hawking thanked Milner for recognising key work in theory with what is now the most lucrative academic prize on the planet.

The second special prize was shared by the leaders of the LHC project, CMS and ATLAS experiments from the time the LHC was approved by the CERN Council in 1994: Peter Jenni, Fabiola Gianotti (ATLAS), Michel Della Negra, Tejinder Singh Virdee, Guido Tonelli, Joe Incandela (CMS) and Lyn Evans (LHC), for their role in the epic endeavour that led to the discovery of the new Higgs-like particle.

After they all took the stage Mr Matsuev performed Edvard Grieg’s “The Hall of the Mountain King”, presumably a reference to the great caverns in which the Higgs-like particle was first spotted. The award-winning biographer Graham Farmelo, who has advised on the development and launch of Collider, said it was ‘the most impressive gathering of great physicists for almost ninety years – since Einstein and most of the other discoveries of relativity and quantum theory met at the famous Solvay Conference in 1926’.

The Museum’s £1m Collider exhibition is part-funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, Winton Capital Management, the Embassy of Switzerland in the United Kingdom, and is supported by a number of individuals.

Collider will open in November 2013 and run for six months. Visits to Collider will be timed and, to avoid disappointment, please visit sciencemuseum.org.uk/collider to book tickets.

Google Chrome Web Lab in the Science Museum

Web Lab nominated for three Webby Awards

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Chrome Web Lab has been nominated for three Webby Awards – Best Visual Design (Aesthetic), Education and NetArt – but now we need your votes.

Web Lab, a series of interactive Chrome Experiments developed by Google and running online 24/7 here at the Science Museum in London, brings the extraordinary workings of the internet to life.

Over 5 million online users – and hundreds of thousands of museum visitors – have already created music together (included musician Will.i.am), watched their portrait being drawn by a robot and discovered much more about the hidden workings of the World Wide Web.

Will.i.am explores Google Web Lab at the Science Museum

Will.i.am explores Google Web Lab at the Science Museum

The Webby Awards – now in their 17th year – showcase the best of the web, and this year Chrome Web Lab has been nominated along with the likes of TED Education, the Exploratorium and Walking with Dinosaurs.

If you’ve enjoyed visiting Web Lab (either online or when here at the Museum) please cast your vote for Web Lab in one (or all) of the categories below.

Click and vote for Web Lab…
Best Visual Design (Aesthetic
Education
NetArt

We were also delighted to discover our recently re-designed homepage was also given an Honoree mention in the Best Homepage category.

Backdropped by a colourful Earth, this full view of the International Space Station was photographed from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

How to brush your teeth in space?

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Have you ever wondered how you clean your teeth in space?

It’s not a problem for most of us, but for the six astronauts orbiting 370km (220 miles) above us in the International Space Station, even simple tasks can be challenging in microgravity.

The International Space Station photographed from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

The International Space Station photographed from the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Credit © National Aeronautics & Space Administration / Science & Society Picture Library

Luckily, our favourite tweeting astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield – who shares incredible daily images of the Earth including the stunning image of London at night below – has the answer.

Chris took time out of commanding the International Space station to share how he manages to brush his teeth while travelling at 8 km/sec.

Back on earth, you can discover how we are able to live in space – to breathe, to eat, to drink and… to go to the toilet – in our Exploring Space gallery, or watch ISS astronauts in action in our Space Station 3D IMAX film.

View of the LHCb cavern

X-citing news from CERN

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Dr. Harry Cliff, a Physicist working on the LHCb experiment and the first Science Museum Fellow of Modern Science, writes about a new discovery at CERN for our blog. A new Science Museum exhibition about the Large Hadron Collider will open in November 2013, showcasing particle detectors and the stories of scientific discoveries.

In 2003 physicists at the Belle experiment in Japan reported they had discovered a brand new particle.

Adding a new entry to the big book of particle physics is certainly satisfying, but not usually cause for much excitement. The discovery of the Higgs-like boson last year was an exception. After all, hundreds of particles have shown up in experiments over the last century. So many in fact, that they were often referred to, rather derisively, as a “zoo”.

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Image Credit: CERN

But the particle found at Belle was different.

It didn’t fit neatly into the picture painted by theory and there was no clear explanation for its origin. It was a bit of an enigma, and earned a suitably enigmatic name: the X particle.

Professor Val Gibson from the University of Cambridge told me that she and her colleagues “have been mesmerized” about the identify this mysterious particle for the last ten years.

The Particle Zoo

The vast majority of the particles that make up the particle zoo are not fundamental; in other words they are made up of smaller things and these things are fundamental particles called quarks. Six different types of quark have been discovered and they can form a large number of different combinations, explaining the particle zoo.

However, quarks only bind together in very specific ways. Two ways in fact. One option is a ménage à trois known as a baryon. Baryons include the proton and the neutron, the building blocks of the atomic nucleus. The other option is where a quark and an antiquark couple up to form a meson.

The X didn’t fit easily into either of these pictures. This generated a lot of excitement and there was speculation as to whether it could be an ordinary meson, or some new exotic combination involving four quarks, a tetraquark, or a “molecule” of two mesons stuck together.

If this were true it would be the first time such an exotic state had been definitively seen in nature.

The only way to tell would be to measure the quantum numbers of the X, three properties that give a clue to its internal structure. This hadn’t been possible, until now.

Exciting, Exotic X

Amid the hundreds of trillions of collisions generated by the Large Hadron Collider over the past three years physicists at the LHCb experiment (the experiment I work on) managed to pick out about 300 X particles.

View of the LHCb cavern

View of the LHCb cavern. Image credit: CERN

This week, they presented the first full measurement of the quantum numbers of the X, at a conference at La Thuile in Italy. The result was emphatic – the X is not a meson, it is something altogether more exotic.

LHCb physicist Dr Matt Needham told me that “this measurement is a great step forward in understanding this mysterious X” and a “very exciting result”. However, there is still work to be done.

“The real nature (of the X) is still unclear”. Whether it’s a tetraquark, meson molecule or something else entirely must now be determined.

His colleagues at LHCb will now search for signs of the X decaying in new ways to try to separate out the various different options. Although the Large Hadron Collider has now shut down for two years physicists at LHCb will have no shortage of data to work with. An unprecedented sample was collected during 2012, corresponding to 180 trillion collisions, each one producing hundreds of particles.

The true nature of this enigmatic particle may soon be known. Whatever the result, we have now had our first glimpse of an altogether new state of matter. Finding out exactly what the X is will bring us deeper understanding of nature’s fundamental building blocks and the forces that bind them together.

Visitors to the Science Museum will have a chance to get up close and personal with the LHC at a new exhibition opening in November 2013. The exhibition will showcase real pieces of the LHC, including an intricate particle detector from the heart of the LHCb experiment.

Google Chrome Web Lab in the Science Museum

Web Lab: See the magic of the web brought to life

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Hello there! John and Saam here. We’re two of the crack team of facilitators at the Google Chrome Web Lab, here in the Science Museum.

What’s Web Lab, we hear you ask? It’s a new, interactive exhibition based at the Science Museum about the Internet and the World Wide Web. However, visitors from across the world can also – rather amazingly – visit the exhibition and take part in all of our experiments online at chromeweblab.com

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One of the special things about Web Lab is that it explores the connection between virtual users (on the website) and physical users (in the gallery) – forming a global community. We do that through a series of five unique, web-based experiments.

Google Chrome Web Lab in the Science Museum

There’s the Data Tracer image search, the Universal Orchestra, the Teleporter live stream, the Lab Tag explorer, and arguably the favourite for many visitors, the Sketchbot, that can draw your face in sand!

The experiments are all FUN but they also help you understand how things work on the web. For example, the sketchbots show how the web uses computer languages and protocols to tell machines what to do. The Orchestra, on the other hand, demonstrates the use of ‘web sockets’ to enable two-way communication and real-time interaction over the web, and the Teleporter teaches you about how web technologies use compression to send large amounts of data quickly over vast distances.

Data Tracker, one of 5 Google Chrome experiments in Web Lab

We’ll tell you more about all the experiments in future blogs, but if you’re eager to find out more information right now, visit Web Lab or pop into the Museum, and we’ll be happy to run through the experiments with you in person!

Fun fact to impress your friends: what’s the difference between the internet and the World Wide Web? The Internet is the global network of computers all talking to each other. The Web, on the other hand, is the system of hypertext documents, such as this web page that sits on the Internet, which you can explore with your browser.