The tour continues for the Large Hadron Collider

Today the Collider exhibition, which began life at London’s Science Museum, launches in Manchester, UK, ahead of an international tour

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The tour continues for the Large Hadron Collider

Artefacts on display include this cavity used to accelerate particles in the Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP), the precursor to the LHC (Image: MOSI/Chris Foster)

Today marks the launch of the Collider exhibition at the Museum of Science & Industry (MOSI) in Manchester, UK. This immersive exhibition began its life at the Science Museum in London late last year and visits Manchester from now until 28 September, when it will embark on an international tour.

Blending physics with theatre and video, the exhibition takes visitors on a behind-the-scenes tour of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and includes artefacts ranging from a radiofrequency cavity and parts of LHC experiments to one of the bikes used by CERN’s scientists and engineers to travel along the LHC’s 27-km tunnels.

The exhibition showcases a long tradition of world-leading particle physics in Manchester and surrounding areas. Visitors can see atomic models illustrating Ernest Rutherford’s 1911 discovery of the atomic nucleus, the cloud chamber used by George Rochester and Clifford Butler to discover 'strange' particles (now called K-mesons) in 1946 and the intricate LHCb vertex locator (VELO) module, manufactured at the University of Liverpool.

The Collider exhibition was developed by the Science Museum in London, who commissioned a creative team led by Nissen Richards Studio, including playwright Michael Wynne, video designer Finn Ross and sound designer Carolyn Downing. More information about the exhibition and events programme is available on the MOSI website.