Template:Short description Template:Infobox museum
Microcosm or CERN Museum was an interactive exhibition presenting the work of the CERN particle physics laboratory and its flagship accelerator the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It first opened to the public in 1990 and closed permanently in September 2022, to be replaced by the Science Gateway in 2023.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The final version of the exhibition opened in January 2016,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> developed by CERN in collaboration with Spanish design team Indissoluble.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
HistoryEdit
The project was approved by the CERN Directorate in February 1988. The initial construction, to a large extent completed in 1989, was financed through contributions from the Canton of Geneva, the Swiss Confederation, neighbouring France, banks, and industrial firms.<ref name=CERN_FC_3197 >Template:Cite report</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
Main exhibitsEdit
The exhibition displayed many real objects, taking visitors on a journey through CERN's key installations, from the hydrogen bottle, source of the protons that are injected into the LHC, through the first step in the accelerator chain, the linac, on to a model of a section of the Large Hadron Collider including elements from the superconducting magnets. Visitors could interact with the displays to try their hand at the controls of a particle accelerator – simulating the acceleration of protons in the LHC and bringing them into collision inside the experiments.
The exhibition contained a 1:1 scale model of a complete slice through the CMS experiment at the LHC. The computing section displayed some of the Oracle data tapes used to store the 30-40 petabytes of data produced yearly by the experiments, made available for analysis using the LHC Computing GRID. The annex to the exhibition contained other historical artifacts such as the central tracker from the UA1 detector, which ran at the Super Proton Synchrotron at CERN from 1981 to 1984, and helped discover the W and Z bosons.
Special projectsEdit
A project began in 2013 to preserve the original hardware and software associated with the birth of the World Wide Web. This effort coincided with the 20th anniversary of the research center giving the web to the world.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Microcosm gardenEdit
The Microcosm garden is named Léon Van Hove Square in honour of CERN's Research Director-General from 1976 to 1980.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> The garden features several large components of old CERN experiments.
- Microcosm Garden.jpg
The garden view
- Microcosm 0048.jpg
General view of the Detectors room
- Microcosm 0017.jpg
Entrance to the exhibition
- Microcosm 0031.jpg
Introduction to the particles room
- Big European Bubble Chamber.jpg
- LEP RF.jpg
An RF cavity from the Large Electron–Positron Collider
- Microcosm initial accelerator.jpg
Initial stages of an old particle accelerator
- CERN-Introduction to the particles room.jpg
Particles room also features an interactive cloud chamber - device capable of displaying normally undetectable traces of radiation
- Microcosm 0028.jpg
Measuring energy detector
- Microcosm 0037.jpg
Detectors room
- Microcosm 0006.jpg
DATA room
- Microcosm 0011.jpg
LHC control room
- UA1.jpg
The central section of the UA1 experiment on display at the Microcosm museum
LocationEdit
Microcosm was located at CERN in the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland, near the town of Meyrin. Entrance was free, without reservation, open 6 days a week.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>