CERN sees the future big

With its two tube-shaped galleries, the bright white flagship can be reminiscent of an airport terminal or the ISS, the International Space Station. It is the Italian star architect Renzo Piano, the architect of the Pompidou center in Paris, who designed these 8,000 m2 of new spaces, suspended above the ground. These long spaces also recall the tunnel 27 kilometers in circumference, buried here, 100 meters underground, a replica of which is installed in the new visitor center.

“The Science Portal looks a little bit like these tubes that we have under our feet, the particle accelerator, the large hadron collider, explains Frenchman Arnaud Marsollier, spokesperson for CERN. Renzo Piano wanted to reproduce with this building the technical and industrial rendering of the buildings found at CERN, or of the underground experiments, to make them available to the public on the surface, even when the particle accelerator is operating.”

Inside this new “Science Portal”, five fun and connected spaces, touch screens for children from five years old and their parents, physics enthusiasts or beginners, workshops for everyone, a laboratory for self-realization even experiences, permanent exhibitions, a large amphitheater, a shop and a restaurant, all connected by a footbridge worthy of the film “star Wars.”

“It’s a bridge that allows you to explore different spaces, explains the Frenchman. In these tubes, we have interactive exhibitions, both to discover the history of the Universe, the quantum world and its very bizarre properties, which do not function at all like our everyday reality.”

For example, we can practice quantum tennis, where the trajectory of the ball follows rules that are surprising.

Big bang and antimatter

This new equipment also plays the eco-card with more than 2,000 m2 of solar panels and 400 trees planted on the site, making it a carbon neutral building.

Entirely financed by donations, the project cost the equivalent of 100 million euros. It was at CERN that the current version of the Internet was invented in 1989. Tim Berners-Lee, a British researcher, designed and developed his project so that scientists from universities around the world could exchange information instantly. Here, we talk about big bang, collider and antimatter.

Beyond the new “Science portal”, the particularity of CERN is that you can visit the installations themselves. These are former in-house engineers who make the visits, like the Frenchman André Rubio, an entire career spent at CERN in the accelerator department, retired since 2004.

He receives visitors, particularly young people and adolescents: “They not only have the questions but also the answers, he remarks. Because with science fiction films and parallel worlds, they already know about it, they have seen all these things. We try to find fundamental equations related to their explanations.”

Entrance to the site is free but the visits, offered in thirty different languages, are done in small groups and it is impossible to reserve. You have to come and try your luck there on the big day. CERN is already the first site visited in Geneva. Its objective is to ultimately welcome 500,000 visitors per year, compared to 150,000 before Covid.

Go further

CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research.

The new Science Portal.

Find this column on the site, the app and in the international mobility magazine “Français à l’avenir.fr”.