CARLOS LEÓN

LHC Interactive Tunnel (LIT) - A unique fully immersive experience

How can we shorten the distance between complex scientific knowledge and wide public understanding? Concepts like “the influence of Higgs Field on matter” and “particle acceleration and collision” can lead to explanations which are quite often hard to understand and even harder to retain.

By immersing the public in a fully interactive gaming experience, the LHC Interactive Tunnel manages to bridge the gap between science education, interactive media and information visualization, creating an entertaining and memorable tool for learning.

When entering the tunnel, the users are presented with two very high-definition projection surfaces – front and floor, as well as an audio system. Their body movements are captured by a set of two Kinect sensors.

A tablet running an Android app developed by the Media Lab team controls the installation. From here on the possibilities are endless. Firstly, a video player allows you to display pre-rendered content. In addition, we have developed two new applications:

Proton Football invites visitors to play football with protons. This application allows us to explain how particles are accelerated and what happens when two protons collide. The harder you kick, the more energy in the collision and the more particles are produced.

Learn more about Proton Football

HEAL is a serious game designed to make visitors experience and understand Hadron Therapy, a treatment for cancer that uses accelerator’s technologies developed at CERN. The user can control himself the application by using his hands with real-life movements, thanks to body recognition technology.

Learn more about HEAL

CERN Director-General Fabiola Gianotti playing Proton Football

The new design for LIT was first shown during The Automnales, 10-19 November 2017, an event where the installation was tested with more than 150k visitors.

Many Science Museums wanted to have their own permanent version of LIT, so from the Media Lab we provided the materials and support for them to build it while being integrated with their exhibitions.