Discover 13.7 billion years of history in 20 minutes at CERN exhibition

With one step to the other side of the curtain, one finds him or herself in a universe where the seeds of the Earth are ready to explode to create the world we know. Surrounded by walls featuring graphics and information on how the Earth came into being, visitors get a chance to experience the Big Bang theory and the CERN experiments close-up. All these are possible thanks to the collaborations of Turkey's Bilgi University and the Swiss-based European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the CERN exhibition "Accelerating Science."

Held for the first time in Istanbul, the "Accelerating Science" exhibition aims to deliver Earth's 13.7 billion-year-old story to science lovers until July 23 at Bilgi University's Santral campus. The exhibition, which travels the world aiming to reach as many people as possible, targets all those who are curious about the origins of our universe, the nature of the particles we are all made from and the power of fundamental science. The goal of the exhibition is to inspire a sense of wonder and curiosity about the origins of the universe and the basic constituents of matter. It shows how experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN will unravel some of the great mysteries of the universe, displaying the connection between fundamental research in the past and technologies of the present.



The exhibition area at Bilgi University's Santral Campus is a door that opens to the heart of the universe, promising an exciting journey to the creation of Earth. The interactive exhibition features five, short tunnel sections which are also called "transfer pods," joining together the five main zones and transporting visitors from one theme to the next. The exterior walls of the tunnels feature graphics and descriptive texts written both in Turkish and English. A significant part of the exhibition, which is suitable for visitors 12 years of age and over, consists of interactive media including touch panels and games that are particularly attractive to the younger audience.

The entry to the exhibition is donned with a curtain decorated with stars making visitors feel as though they are entering through a door that opens to the secrets of the universe, giving visitors a sense of discovery and anticipation. The dimly lit atmosphere of the tunnel is broken with a screen demonstrating how the Big Bang occurred and how Earth came into being in the vast universe. The first tunnel, which is called "the Big Bang Theater,"offers visitors a lively experience of the first moments of the Big Bang. While interactive media gives visitors a visual and audial sneak-peak into the origins of the creation of Earth for a brief five minutes, detailed information included in texts on the walls also provide visitors with a wealth of information.




The second tunnel, called the "Meet the Particles Area," offers a brief history on the discovery of particles. The tunnel offers the answers to questions such as, "How big are particles?" or basic questions such as, "What are particles?" Before the visitors know what is going on, the interactive exhibition takes the audience on a journey into the microscopic world of atoms and particles. The interactive screen allows visitors to take a look at how particles interact with each other and how particles are accelerated.

"Mysteries of Universe," the third tunnel of the "Accelerating Science" exhibition, opens a door into the vast universe. While scientists are only able to observe 4 percent of the entire universe, this section of the exhibition offers a quick glimpse into the mysteries of the universe and prepares the audience for the next tunnel by offering them information about Dark Matter and AntiMatter as well as the Higgs Boson.

There is no doubt that the fourth section of the exhibition is the most exciting, as it contains the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The fourth tunnel is reserved for scientific research carried out in CERN. There is a model of LHC that first began on Sept. 10, 2008, and remains the latest addition to CERN's accelerator complex. The LHC consists of a 27-kilometer (16.7-mile) ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way. Inside the accelerator, two high-energy particle beams travel at speeds close to the speed of light before they are forced to collide.

The beams travel in opposite directions in separate beam pipes – two tubes kept in an ultrahigh vacuum. The model in the exhibition is the exact copy of the accelerator in CERN -- 25 times smaller than the CERN accelerator -- and shows how particles collide with each other. The section also features a screen where the audience can experience how protons collide while the ATLAS control center as CERN decodes the data that comes into being following the collision.



The last tunnel of the exhibition offers information about research conducted at CERN and how it affects our everyday lives. The interactive boards as well as the informative texts on the walls show that technology such as touch screens, MR machines and the internet came into being thanks to experiments done at CERN.



Founded in 1954, the CERN laboratory sits along the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe's first joint ventures and now has 22 member states collaborating in states such as Turkey. Physicists and engineers are investigating the fundamental structure of the universe. They use the world's largest and most complex scientific instruments to study the basic constituents of matter – the fundamental particles. On their way to discover the mysteries of the universe, scientists at CERN have discovered technologies that shape the lives of modern man. If you want to roll up the curtain that hides the secrets of the creation of the universe, you are invited to attend the "Accelerating Science" exhibition at Bilgi University.