Marina Bay Sands' ArtScience Museum Opens New Collider Exhibit Today

Art and Science will collide in the most spectacular way with the award-winning Collider exhibition arriving at Marina Bay Sands' ArtScience Museum today 14 November in its Asian debut.

Drawing visitors into the fascinating world of experimental particle physics, Collider will provide an up-close look at the world's greatest scientific experiment: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) in Geneva.

Buried deep under the border between Switzerland and France, CERN's Large Hadron Collider is the work of 10,000 men and women from across the globe, united in their quest to uncover the fundamental building blocks of our universe.

This immersive exhibition blends theatre, video and sound art with real artefacts from CERN, recreating a visit to the famous particle physics laboratory. Visitors will be transported to the recreated site of the LHC where they can explore the 27-km collider and its cathedral-sized detector caverns. They can virtually meet with scientists and engineers from CERN, snoop around a researcher's workbench, and examine objects up-close. Ultimately, they will discover how studying the subatomic world can point the way to a fuller understanding of our universe.

"ArtScience Museum is thrilled to be hosting the Asian premier of the Collider exhibition. This extraordinary exhibition puts visitors in the heart of an experiment that recreates the conditions that existed just after the Big Bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago. The LHC is designed to answer some of the most fundamental questions we have about the universe. It has already been responsible for the 21st century's most exciting scientific discovery - the Higgs boson, and every week it generates incredible new science, which is shaping the way we understand the world. This deeply immersive exhibition blends theatre, film and science to give visitors a flavour of the life and the community of the LHC. Thus, it is a perfect representation of ArtScience Museum's ongoing efforts to showcase the interrelation of art, science and technology," said Ms Honor Harger, Executive Director, ArtScience Museum.

"The LHC is a truly global scientific project, involving scientists and engineers from over a hundred countries. More than 400,000 people visited the Collider exhibition during its European tour and it's fantastic that a new South East Asian audience will get a chance to see the exhibition for the first time at ArtScience Museum," Dr Harry Cliff, Fellow of Modern Science, Science Museum.

Delving deeper in the LHC, the visitors will follow the journey of particle beams as they are injected into the accelerator chain, ramped up to speed and steered around the 27-kilometre long LHC tunnel. Moving along the tunnel, visitors are then immersed in the highlight of the exhibition - a wrap-around 270-degree projection taking in both extremes of the scale of the LHC: from an enormous experiment cavern, to the very heart of a particle collision where the protons are fired at 99.9999991% the speed of light.

Through this ground-breaking exhibition, visitors get to witness the beautiful visual representation of a collision, where a shower of new particles is produced and the data is distributed globally to research institutions to decipher the mysteries of the Universe.

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 to produce a unique and immersive experience. The tour of the exhibition is made possible by the support of Winton Capital Management.

The Large Hadron Collider: facts and figures

-- The Large Hadron Collider is the largest, most sophisticated and most
powerful scientific device ever made. It is being used by thousands of
scientists and engineers around the world to learn more about the tiny
building blocks that make up our Universe and the laws that govern their
behaviour.
-- The precise circumference of the LHC accelerator is 26,659m (almost the
same length as London Underground's Circle Line), with a total of 9,300
magnets inside.
-- When in operation, trillions of protons race around the LHC accelerator
ring 11,245 times a second, travelling at 99.9999991% the speed of
light. Altogether some 600 million collisions take place every second.
-- When two beams of lead ions collide, they generate temperatures more
than 100,000 times hotter than the heart of the Sun.
-- By contrast, the 'cryogenic distribution system', which circulates
superfluid helium around the accelerator ring, keeps the LHC at a super
cool temperature of -271.3°C (1.9 K) - even colder than outer space.
About Marina Bay Sands Pte Ltd

Marina Bay Sands is the leading business, leisure and entertainment destination in Asia. It features large and flexible convention and exhibition facilities, 2,560 hotel rooms and suites, the rooftop Sands SkyPark, the best shopping mall in Asia, world-class celebrity chef restaurants and an outdoor event plaza. Its two theatres showcase a range of leading entertainment performances including world-renowned Broadway shows. Completing the line-up of attractions is ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands, which plays host to permanent and marquee exhibitions. For more information, please visit www.marinabaysands.com.

About ArtScience Museum

ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands is Southeast Asia's leading cultural institution that explores the inter-relationship between art, science, technology and culture. Featuring 21 galleries totaling 50,000 square feet, the iconic lotus-inspired building has staged major exhibitions by some of history's most important artists, including Leonardo Da Vinci, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol and Vincent Van Gogh, as well as major exhibitions which explore aspects of scientific history.

About the Science Museum

As the home of human ingenuity, the Science Museum's world-class collection forms an enduring record of scientific, technological and medical achievements from across the globe. Welcoming over 3 million visitors a year, the Museum aims to make sense of the science that shapes our lives, inspiring visitors with iconic objects, award-winning exhibitions and incredible stories of scientific achievement.

About CERN

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its member states are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Romania is a candidate for accession. Cyprus, Israel and Serbia are associate members in the pre-stage to membership. India, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have observer status.

About Winton Capital Management

Winton Capital Management is a leading global alternative investment company and a world leader in financial mathematics and empirical scientific research into financial markets. The company, founded in 1997, now employs some 280 people, including 120 scientists, at research campuses in London, Oxford, Zurich and Hong Kong. Winton Capital also has offices in New York and Sydney.

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