Nikhef launches Expostrip and SRON opens exhibition in Rijksmuseum Boerhaave
NWO Institutes have science capture the imagination
The institutes Nikhef and SRON make their science capture the imagination. On 29 February, Nikhef opened an Expostrip in the central hall of their recently renovated building at the Amsterdam Science Park: an exhibition of components from their own experiments. And on 21 March, SRON opened a public exhibition about black holes at the Dutch history of science museum, Rijkmuseum Boerhaave, in Leiden.
Expostrip at Nikhef
During the official opening of the renovated building of NWO Institute Nikhef, the Expostrip was unveiled: a new in-house exhibition about Nikhef’s work and research. The exhibition shows components from experiments in the area of astroparticle physics and from the detectors at CERN, through to equipment placed on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea (KM3NeT). In addition, the exhibition, which contains texts and pictures, tells the story of the work done by researchers in subatomic physics. In the story, a lot of attention has been paid to the need for innovative techniques, which have, in part, been developed and built at Nikhef.
This is a permanent exhibition located in the new central atrium, named Vertex, of the Nikhef building. Nikhef developed the Nikhef Expostrip in cooperation with designer Wiek Rozemond, and exhibition builder Letter Z Design. The exhibition is aimed at visitors to the institute and open days. For more information, please visit the Nikhef website. The Expostrip also has a dedicated website that explains the components.
SRON exhibition ‘Towards the Black Hole’
On 21 March, a new exhibition about Black Holes was opened at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave in Leiden in cooperation with NWO Institute SRON. This exhibition takes visitors on a trip to the mysterious world of black holes and tries to find answers to questions such as: What do we see if we look at a black hole? How was the first “picture” of a black hole taken? What happens if you fall into a black hole?
Videos, hands-on activities, fantastic items from the collection, and a special ‘experience’ enable visitors to have a step-by-step experience of what a black hole is, what we see if we look at black hole, and what scientists are searching for. SRON is very pleased with the cherry on the cake of this cooperation, a scale model of the Athena X-ray space telescope: the future X-ray space telescope of the European Space Agency (ESA) that will be launched in 2037.
Athena is a powerful X-ray observatory with an unprecedented combination of collecting area, survey capabilities and energy resolution. Its unprecedented capabilities will allow the astronomical community to address a wide range of astrophysics topics. These topics might include among others: accreting compact objects such as black holes over their whole mass range and neutron stars, the hot gas around clusters of galaxies, distant gamma-ray bursts, supernova explosions and remnants, stars, white dwarfs, exoplanets and their parent stars, and the interstellar medium. SRON will develop the camera for X-IFU, one of the instruments on board of Athena.
The exhibition about black holes can be seen until 5 January 2025 at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave in Leiden. It has been realised in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, NWO, SRON and the Dutch Black Hole Consortium. For more information, please see the website of Rijksmuseum Boerhaave.
Newsletter Inside NWO-I, May 2024
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