Future Circular Collider.
3D particle simulations for the BBC series Searching Space, made with Polar Media and CERN. Two sequences visualising particle acceleration and collision for the Future Circular Collider episode.
Scope
Client
Style
Partner
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Challenge
(01)
Showing particle physics to an audience that isn't made of physicists.
The Future Circular Collider is the proposed successor to the Large Hadron Collider, built to go further into the Higgs boson. Explaining it on television means picturing things that have never been seen and never could be. The sequences had to be grounded enough that CERN would stand behind them, and clear enough to hold a general BBC audience through the physics. Those two demands pull in opposite directions: accuracy tends toward the dry, and spectacle tends toward the wrong.
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Solution
(02)
Particle simulations built in Cinema 4D and X-Particles.
Working with Polar Media, I built the sequences in Cinema 4D and X-Particles, covering the pulsing of particles through the accelerator and the moment of collision. They were rendered in Redshift, with a small amount of supporting typography added in After Effects.
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Conclusion
(03)
Two sequences for the Inside the Atom Smasher episode.
The two sequences carry the visual explanation in that episode, standing in for footage that doesn't exist and can't. They give the FCC a form on screen, from the particles moving through the accelerator to the collision itself, at a level of detail that holds up on a broadcast science programme. Working with CERN meant the physics was checked as the work went, so what's on screen is a representation the scientists were happy with.
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