On Friday March 12, 2010, a Researchers’ Night took place in the Lux Theatre in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, (home of Cosmic Experience.) The theme of the evening was “where the smallest and biggest meet”. Topics like cosmology, dark matter and energy, particle physics and huge collider physics experiments, such as the LHC at CERN, were covered with a variety of presentations. The whole evening was video taped and the resulting clips can be found below. The evening was entirely in Dutch. However, if enough comments are posted to tease us we may consider translating the narratives in English.

Impression of the Lux Researcher’s Night
This clip gives you a global impression of the Lux Researchers’ Night that took
place on March 12, 2010. Most items of the evening have been captured in video,
see the list on this page.

Impressie Cosmic Experience Researchers’ Night 12 maart 2010 from Cosmic Experience on Vimeo.

Cosmic Experience presentation
You can see our opening presentation of the Lux Researchers’ night. In this presentation we explain what cosmic rays are and how we can measure them. But even more interesting: how we make music out of them! In the sketch you are taken through different aspect of our Cosmic Experience project. First, a bit of science is explained and after that you can listen to our plans for the ‘zomerfeesten’.

Cosmic Experience Academische Jaarprijs 2009 presentatie from Cosmic Experience on Vimeo.

Nicolo de Groot on Angelse and Demons
Anti matter plays a most prominent role in the popular book Angels and Demons of
Dan Brown. Nicolo de Groot tells us about the merits, nonsense and properties of
anti matter.


Angels&Demons from Cosmic Experience on Vimeo.

José Coppens on detecting cosmic rays
José (of the Cosmic Experience team) explains how we can make cosmic rays visible. First she tells about cosmic rays in general and then she shows two different ways of visualising the rays, with live demonstrations. Further she explains about the Pierre Auger observatory in Argentina, the leading cosmic rays observatory in the world.

Kosmische straling zichtbaar gemaakt from Cosmic Experience on Vimeo.

Heino Falcke on supermassive black holes
Heino is professor of astroparticle physics and radio astronomy and a renowned expert in supermassive black holes. In his presentation he explains in simple terms what black holes are and what they do to their environment. Brace yourself for this speed-of-light presentation!

Megagrote zwarte gaten from Cosmic Experience on Vimeo.

The Mass Mystery
Movie made for Nikhef that shows the quest for the mechanism that generates mass and the Dutch involvement in the Atlas detector that is geared to find the Higgs boson that is a consequence of the current theoretical explanation of the masses of elementary particles.

Het Massa Mysterie from Cosmic Experience on Vimeo.

Paul Groot on What is the universe made of?
Paul Groot, professor of astronomy explains the current state-of-the-art knowledge on the composition of the universe as we know it from observations. He comes to the startling conclusion that only 4% of the content of the universe is matter known to men, and 96% is stuff we only have some faint clues about what it is.

De samenstelling van het heelal from Cosmic Experience on Vimeo.

Henk Hoekstra on Dark Matter
Henk Hoekstra’s specialty is the search for dark matter and energy and more precisely to measure its distribution in the universe. In this clip he takes us with him on his quest and shows the clues we start to have on dark matter.

Donkere Materie from Cosmic Experience on Vimeo.

Sijbrand de Jong on Dark Energy
Sijbrand de Jong shows the connection between the accelerated expanding universe at the largest scales and the structure of vacuum at the smallest quantum scales. He presents two quantum field mechanisms to generate dark energy in simple terms and leaves the spectator with his own puzzles about all of this.

Donkere Energie from Cosmic Experience on Vimeo.

The construction of the Atlas experiment at the LHC at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
This Atlas produced clip shows the construction of the ATLAS experiment in an alternation of virtual reality and web-cam sequences for real life.

ATLAS from virtual to reality from Cosmic Experience on Vimeo.

Debate on the future of Bigs Science in the Netherlands
With Radboud University’s Rector Magnificus Bas Kortmann in the lead, Heino Falcke (Radboud University astronomer), Jos Engelen (NWO funding agency chairman) and Jan Kees Maan (Radboud University director of the High Field Magnet Laboratory) discuss the ins and outs of Big Science in the Dutch context.

Big Science debate from Cosmic Experience on Vimeo.

Quiz

If you’ve seen all of the video’s above, take the quiz to find out what you learned!