Grenoble, France
September – November 2019
CERN’s travelling photographic exhibit, « The Code of the Universe, » is in Grenoble from September 16 to November 18, 2019. Visitors can immerse themselves in this journey of discovery free of charge on the MINATEC micro and nanotechnology innovation campus.
How do the tools we have invented to study our universe lead to the technological innovations that are changing the world? CERN’s « The Code of the Universe » attempts to answer this question through 40 photographs and posters that illustrate the efforts being made around the world to better understand the universe.
The CEA is home to both physicists and technology experts and is a long-standing partner of CERN. In fact, the CEA provides CERN with some of the technologies in its scientific instruments. But these technologies are also used in much more « down to earth » applications, too, from healthcare and security to the internet and big data.
The superconducting magnets initially developed for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator, for example, have led to advances in medical imaging. They were used to develop the world’s largest MRI, which researchers started using this summer to study the brain. Superfluid helium cooling systems—another major innovation originally developed to regulate the temperature inside the LHC’s main ring—also got their start in Grenoble. Today, these systems are in use in many industrial applications.
And these are just two examples of the many innovations scientists have invented to gain a deeper understanding of the universe and that later played a role in advances we benefit from every day. Come and explore them until November 18, 2019 on the square in front of Maison MINATEC.