Next week we’re bringing you the chance to glimpse back in time to the very beginning of the universe with the critically acclaimed documentary Particle Fever screening Thursday, October 9 in the Wortham Giant Screen Theatre at 6:00 p.m.
“Wait a second,” you might say, “how can this documentary show us the beginning of the universe? I’m pretty sure cameras came along much later.”
Well what if I told you that scientists have built a machine capable of re-creating the conditions of that very, very, very, very hot, small, energetic place that would eventually come to be the universe as we know it.
Along the way these scientists also invented a handy little thing called the internet (sorry, Al Gore). You might’ve heard of it… No? Google it.
These are the scientists at CERN in Switzerland and over the past several decades they’ve designed and built the Large Hardron Collider, which is the biggest machine ever made.
“The large whaaaaaa?”
It’s basically a 5 story tall, 27 kilometer long tunnel, lined with computers, 100 meters underground capable of making particles collide with one another at extremely fast speeds so they break up into their fundamental pieces. This can give us a better idea of why the universe looks and behaves the way it does.
In this exciting, fast-paced documentary we get a front-row seat to the frontier of scientific discovery. We watch as scientists’ entire careers hang in the balance, waiting to see what will come out of these experiments. Told through interviews and stunning animation, in a very “approachable-and-interesting-even-if-you-failed-high-school-physics” way, this film will inspire you, much like the scientists it features, to seek out every answer you can about the “everything there is” — the universe.
Particle Fever, showing October 9 in the Wortham Giant Screen Theatre at 6:00 p.m.
Watch the video below for a fantastic intro to the experiments at CERN:
This video delves a little further into just why these scientists are so bent on discovering new particles:
Film Screening
Particle Fever Film Screening
Thursday, October 9, 6 p.m.
Join Hadron Collider researcher Dr. Paul Padley of Rice University for this one-night-only screening of the film Particle Fever at HMNS. Click here for tickets.
