Super-K Sonic Boooom!

(photograph by Nick Ballon)
Well done Tom indeed, but we on T2K are also mixing it up with non-physicists (and artists), in our case in an artist's rendition of Super-Kamiokande, built under London Bridge Station, complete with accompanying sonic booooums....

Super K Sonic Booooum
Nelly Ben Hayoun, sound by Tim Olden
Wed 4 to Sat 14 8pm
Come on a fantastic voyage on a dingy that floats on 50 000 tonnes of extremely pure water where neutrinos interact with electrons in a massive Sonic Boom…Take part on this risky experiment with unique insights from scientists from Imperial College London and Queen Mary University who works with the Neutrino Observatory Super K and T2K in Japan, as SNO in Canada.

www.nellyben.com

This is in the amazing Shunt Lounge, and will be on Friday 6th and Saturday 7th and again from Wednesday 11th till Saturday 14th.

Everyone is welcome, but you need to be there at 8pm for the full experience!

And not only this, but as you can see from the advert:

Scientific Talks at the Sonic Boooum
Nelly Ben Hayoun
Wed 4 to Sat 14
Nov. 4th Dave Wark
Nov. 5th Ryan Terri
Nov. 6th Yoshi Uchida/Melissa George
Nov. 7th Yoshi Uchida/Melissa George

Nov. 11th Matthew Malek
Nov. 12th Ben Still
Nov. 13th Dave Wark
Nov. 14th Francesca De Lodovico

there's a chill-out zone where you can enter the trance-like state that can envelop you when you experience a... physics seminar. Hmmmm....

Photos forthcoming.

Three Minute Wonders

As the Large Hadron Collider gears up to getting proton collisions before Christmas (fingers - well, pretty much everything, actually - crossed), I'm pleased to announce that my "Three Minute Wonders" will be broadcast this week - Channel 4, Monday and Thursday, both at 12:30pm.

As part of the prize for winning FameLab 2009, I got the chance to turn two of my three minute speeches into Three Minute Wonders with Wall To Wall Television. Directed by Peter Sweasey, "Finding Nothing" looks at why a null result would actually be a tremendous return on a £5 billion investment (based on my final-winning talk, below), while Thursday's episode takes a look at the search for Dark Matter at the CMS experiment.



It's not hard to imagine that the current economic climate will lead to a smaller funding pot for science, and that all areas of research are going to feel the pinch. The field of particle physics is no exception. It is therefore essential that we, as responsible researchers, continue to justify why we're doing what we're doing to the politicians holding the purse-string and the tax-payers who we rely on for our very existence - whether it's showing how technology and expertise are being transferred back into UK industry, inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers, or simply reminding us that projects like the LHC should make us all, as a fellow outreacher Zoe Matthews (Birmingham) beautifully put it, "proud to be human beings". Hopefully films like these, and the work of all those involved in particle physics outreach, will help. I am therefore immensely grateful to NESTA, Channel 4, FameLab, Cheltenham Science Festival, Wall To Wall, Peter Sweasey, the CMS Secretariat, the CERN Press Office and my colleagues in the Imperial CMS group for the fantastic opportunities provided, their much-needed help and (sometimes considerable) understanding of what's involved in making six minutes of television.

Enjoy the films - and let us know what you think!

PS: Once they have been broadcast I think they'll be made available online - I'll try to provide more information when I have it.