It’s the world’s largest machine – built with the aim of discovering the very origins of life itself and credited with discovering the long sought-after “God particle”.
Now, people in the north-east will have the chance to look at a full-scale replica of one section of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) as it is exhibited at Satrosphere in Aberdeen from next month.
The exhibition, from Saturday, May 2, to Sunday, June 14, follows a two-year upgrade at CERN, where the 17-mile device sits more than 500ft under the Franco-Swiss border.
The LHC Roadshow has been updated with new interactive exhibits and redesigned tunnel artwork.
It aims to show the new discoveries that scientists could make after the changes to the LHC doubled the power of the machine that led to the discovery of the elusive Higgs Boson “God particle” in 2012.
Nobel prize-winning physicist Peter Higgs is famously reported to have had his brainwave about the particle when walking in the Cairngorms during a break from his work at Edinburgh University.
During the original programme, the exhibition visited 17 venues, travelled more than 4,200 miles and was seen by more than 600,000 people at venues across the UK.
Catriona Wynne, STEM learning coordinator at Aberdeen Science Centre, said: “We are delighted to welcome this fantastic exhibition. It is a particularly exciting time as the LHC has restarted this month, with protons circling the machine’s 27km tunnel for the first time since 2013. This is the perfect opportunity to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers.”
The LHC Roadshow exhibition at Aberdeen Science Centre, Satrosphere, is open to the general public from 10am-4pm, Monday to Friday, and from 10am-5pm on Saturdays and Sundays.