I live a life of geekery.
Day job, blog, gin, running, knitting. All of them I treat with the enthusiasm of a geek – I may not always have the knowledge, but that’s part of the fun. Learning. Researching. Asking questions.
My day job, working at the University of Manchester, means I get to work with some of the brightest minds in physics in the world. And yes, I can legitimately say that – ask me in person who I work for.
I don’t mind admitting that I don’t find physics easy. Biology, even chemistry I understand better. I find physics involves a little more ‘belief’ sometimes – what they believe is true and correct, it’s just not always visible in a way that other sciences are.
But as I say, I’m learning all the time.
So when the Collider Exhibition popped into my inbox, I got very excited. This exhibition is all about the CERN Large Hadron Collider, the thing that a lot of Mancunians know as the project that Professor Brian Cox is involved in and we all like him because he’s pretty and smart (the others will know as the successful bid to find the Higgs Boson particle).
There’s no denying he is, but it’s more than that. It’s a set of experiments to look into our world on a fundamental level, the building blocks of the universe. In the same way DNA research looks into what makes us, us, the Collider experiments look into what makes the world the world.
And it tries very hard to do it at a level everyone can understand.
The scene is set at the beginning with a small film, where different characters both talk about their work, and the work of their colleagues at the Collider. 27 km long, it takes a team of more than 2000 people to maintain, run and analyse data in the laboratory around 10000 visiting scientists work within it.
That’s a lot of people.
Watch out for a little cameo in the film too.
The end of the film also shows the announcement of the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle and Professor Peter Higgs, the man behind the name (though several other scientists had a similar theory around the same time), is filmed at the announcement. He is a rather lovely man and I cannot imagine his feelings at the confirmation of such an important theory.
Moving away from the film, however, is the full exhibition and the stuff that really gets me excited. This is looks at behind the scenes, at the work of the engineers, the computer scientists and chemists who along with the physicists, are working on the experiments surrounding LHC.
Alongside pieces of equipment (some replacement parts, some prototypes) there is video of the engineers talking, and audio from some of the scientists. All talk about their work with an infectious enthusiasm – even if I found myself mentally making notes for research later. More learning.
There’s even a replica office, with perhaps one of the best explanations of the Higgs mechanism (taken from the David Miller original and adapted, as the subject of this one may be lost on some viewers). I have to say from experience that most researchers offices aren’t this big and if they are, are invariably shared!
With astonishing facts and figures, great explanations and pieces that you really can’t see anywhere else, this is a fascinating exhibition and a glimpse into a truly astonishing field of research, that’s comfortable enough for anyone to understand.
And much as I’d like to tell you about all of it…. I can’t. You’ll need to experience it for yourself.
Personally, I’m booking onto some of talks surrounding the exhibition, including one by Prof Cox’s Infinite Monkey Cage partner in crime Robin Ince.
For now though, I’m wondering about the LHC research into creating mini black holes…
Yeah. I’m definitely a geek.