The Big Bang Experience! A brief history and future of the LHC

If you've watched the characters in the TV show, The Big Bang Theory, then you may think of particle physicists as an odd bunch: why do boffins spend their time in huge underground laboratories like CERN accelerating particles in endless circles like an enormous train set? How do you get a train of particles to nearly the speed of light anyway, and why on earth would you want to? What weird things happen when the particles collide? Might anything go wrong? Or could a particle accelerator one day save your loved one's life?

Find out! Spend an evening with ex-CERN Particle Accelerator Physicist, Professor Stephen Gibson, as he guides you with live demonstrations on the wonders of the Large Hadron Collider, and how it is unravelling the mysteries of the universe. Learn why the LHC was built, how it works and how Professor Gibson's team are helping to stop it self-destruct (again) in an explosion of liquid helium! Meet the team designing future, more powerful accelerators, that will ramp up the luminosity and discovery reach beyond the present LHC and the dream-beams for the future.

Warning: loud demonstrations; not for the faint of heart!

Professor Stephen Gibson is the Head of Department of Physics, and a Professor in Accelerator Physics at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has a DPhil in Experimental Particle Physics from the University of Oxford and has helped build and run the ATLAS experiment at CERN. When not lecturing Physics undergraduates at Royal Holloway, University of London, he still spends time in underground tunnels at CERN, as he leads the RHUL-CERN collaboration on the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider.

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