On Saturday, 28 and Sunday, 29 September, CERN will open up its installations to the general public. With the slogan “Our universe is yours”, these two Open Days will put the spotlight on CERN's discoveries and experiments, as well as the fantastic machines that lead to these discoveries.
From 9am to 8pm, visitors will have the chance to meet CERN’s researchers, engineers and technicians and to explore their laboratories, technical halls, experiments and accelerators at the biggest particle physics centre in the world. There will be some 40 visitor points: highlights for visitors to explore on the surface will include experiments at the antimatter factory, the cryogenic and crystal laboratories and the halls housing the enormous magnets. Underground, they will be able to visit the points of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – the world’s largest accelerator – and its experiments.
The Open Days have been scheduled within the long shutdown of the accelerators, during which important work is being carried out so that the LHC can run at a higher energy when it restarts in 2015.
As places on the underground visits are strictly limited, an electronic ticket office will be open throughout the second half of August: people will be able to reserve up to four tickets, which will be valid for a specific day and timeslot. The tickets will be made available on the website progressively over a period of three weeks to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to book them.
As well as the visits, numerous other activities and presentations have been planned. Around 100,000 visitors are expected over the course of these two Open Days. Free park and ride services will be provided to facilitate access, with shuttle buses from local car parks to the various CERN sites. All the visits and activities are also free of charge.