Ahead of November’s opening of the Collider exhibition, Content Developer Rupert Cole takes a look at the story behind the Geiger counter “The excitement is growing so much I think the Geiger counter of Olympo-mania is going to go zoink on the scale!” Thus spoke Boris Johnson in his London Olympics opening speech a little over a year ago. The author of several popular histories including Johnson’s Life of London, is it conceivable Mayor Boris knew the Olympic summer coincided […]
Associate Curator Rupert Cole explores some famous physics parties of the past.
Ahead of November’s opening of the Collider exhibition, Rupert Cole explains how beer was used for cutting-edge particle physics research.
The search for one of the rarest processes in fundamental physics is over, writes Dr. Harry Cliff, a Physicist working on the LHCb experiment and the first Science Museum Fellow of Modern Science.
Ahead of November’s opening of the Collider exhibition here at the Science Museum, Content Developer Rupert Cole celebrates six decades of research at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Alice Lighton, content developer for our Collider exhibition, writes about the history of quantum physics. Collider: step inside the world’s greatest experiment opens in November 2013 with a behind-the-scenes look at the famous CERN particle physics laboratory. The air brimmed with excitement on this momentous day. The discovery of the particle confirmed a theory that had taken years to devise, and justified the toil of hundreds of scientists. You might think I’m referring to the Higgs boson – the particle that explains mass, […]
Dr. Harry Cliff, a Physicist working on the LHCb experiment and the first Science Museum Fellow of Modern Science, writes about his recent filming trip to CERN for Collider, a new Science Museum exhibition opening in November 2013. The first part can be read here. Day 2, Thursday On the first day of the Collider exhibition team’s visit to CERN we had explored the architecture and interiors of the town-sized laboratory. Now it was time to enter its beating heart: the gigantic experiments probing the fundamental laws […]
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 […]
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 […]
The Science Museum is bringing the LHC to London in a new immersive exhibition opening in November writes Dr. Roger Highfield
Quantum dots will change the world says Prof. Jim Al-Khalili, and they deserve your vote as the innovation most likely to shape our future.
“No technology has been so pervasive so quickly as the internet. Twenty-five years ago it was a mystery to most people and now several billion of us use it everyday, several times a day.” Brian Eno on why you should vote for the the World Wide Web.