A series of short creative videos introducing some of the physicists, engineers and technicians of the ATLAS experiment at CERN, and the passions that drive them.

Physicists and artists share a common goal - to make an abstract idea tangible.

A key question they are trying to answer is one that many people would like an answer to: Where do we come from? ATLAS is a collaboration of more than 3,000 people from all over the world. Together they built a machine on the Franco-Swiss border that has as many components as an aircraft-carrier and weighs as much as the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

If that machine were a digital camera it would take 100 megapixel snapshots 40 million times per second. Each of these images is a piece of the puzzle involving our origins, from the Big Bang to you. The Art of ATLAS  presents the physicists, engineers, and technicians involved in this epic endeavor, the machine they've constructed, the artists lurking inside them, and the art in the imagery they create.

The Art of ATLAS was on display outside the planetarium entrance
from 28 October 2010 to 7 February 2011

Tell us what you think of this sciartwork on our Facebook page