Concept 'Roaring Ring'  Project Plan

Quick Facts:

Exhibit foot print: 30' diameter

30 17" monitors running animations of particles in combiner ring and colliding

24 54"w x 32"h art and explaination panels

24 19"w x 81" images from Hubble Space Telescope

Imagine---

You have special unearthly powers.

X-Ray vision allows you to look into dirt, stone, metal and glass.

You are able to 'see' the movement of sub-atomic particles and their energy wakes, distortion and trails.  Huge and subtle discharges are perceptible.  Time can be slowed and scale is of no concern to you.

Information is now observable as well.  Huge amounts of data appear as glowing aqueous waves.  Color and intensity help you to see the great quantity of data flowing around you.

- - -

For your first adventure with these special powers you decide to visit the High Energy Physics lab.  As you approach the Combiner Ring Facility you see through the concrete tunnel and observe the support tube and the magnets, and the beam line. 

Looking more closely you watch an enormous rush of energy pass by you as the passage of electrons create a beautiful wake of energy.

You walk towards the center of the ring so that it can surround you.  Observing the ring's perimeter from this vantage point makes the rings look as if they are at mid-torso level, fully engulfing you and immersing you in the electrons' fleeting moments of life in their current form and energy as they whirl by, round and round.

You notice two different objects moving in opposite directions from each other, encircling you on their journey towards decimation.  As you watch them approach, you are well aware that time has slowed by a scale of millions, but you can observe their approach clearly.

The two objects collide with such force and perfection that you bare witness to the creation of an amazing sculpture of light and lines over your head.  Such immense beauty and power!  The collision event creates, in superb detail, the trajectory of each sub-atomic particle as it moves away from its birth towards its death.

As the fantastic explosion of energy engulfs your senses you observe another massive glowing trail streaming out of the interaction point.  This is the data created by the collision event as it strikes the different elements of the detector trained to watch to the minutest change in its surrounding mirco-environment.  From here it streams out of the detector towards the data center for collection, analysis, filtering and storage.  The quantity and speed of data is incredible, blowing by over your head. 

The displays around you come alive with status reports on the receipt of these data shipments.  No one would believe the numbers and scales you are observing, you have witnessed in full body detail, the awe-inspiring physics and computing technology of HEP labs.

As your heart beat becomes noticeable again, you realize another such collision is about to occur, again and again.....