Recreating the early Universe

In November scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva created a microscopic version of the Big Bang by smashing together nuclei of lead atoms. The experiment produced temperatures a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun, breaking up protons and neutrons into a soup of exotic particles known as quarks and gluons – the kind of incredibly hot, dense mixture that filled the Universe shortly after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. In this talk, particle physicist Brian Cox will explain how the LHC and experiments like it are helping scientists understand conditions in the early Universe, and what that tells us about the origins of stars, galaxies and life itself.

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About Brian Cox

Brian Cox is Professor of Particle Physics at the University of Manchester, but is better known to the public as a presenter of popular science programmes such as Wonders of the Solar System, broadcast in 2010. He obtained a first-class honours degree in physics from the University of Manchester and his PhD in high-energy particle physics at the DESY particle physics laboratory in Hamburg. He works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. A new BBC TV series, Wonders of the Universe, is due for transmission in 2011.

Brian Cox's home page