Dear ATLAS LEGO Fans,

The (possible, but hopefully not) final shipment of ATLAS Model lego bricks has arrived at CERN and it is now time for: ATLAS LEGO Challenge 2014!

This challenge, taking place the week of 17-21 February, will be a kind of micro-ATLAS project.
A newly formed collaboration will be charged with taking 350 kg of bricks, currently sorted by type, and re-organising them into bags and boxes for 23 large models.

This event, clearly the greatest brick adventure CERN has ever seen, will be launched on 17 Feb, at 5pm in 602-R-021 (you will be required to have CERN access).

Follow progress on Twitter, Google+, Facebook (#BYOPD) and of course here!

The call for volunteers is now open.
Please register at our event page, where you can also follow updates and get information about the event.

You might have guessed from the title of the post, LEGO Cuusoo has decided not to consider our ATLAS LEGO mini model as an official LEGO set.

After the initial success of gaining 10.000 supporters in only two weeks and patiently waiting for several months we finally got the sad news yesterday.

This means you will have to dig out your old pile of LEGOs or buy some pieces second hand to build your own version at home. The manual and the 3D design file you can find on our page.

Given one last* chance from LEGO CEE Community Support, I have ordered another twenty more large ATLAS LEGO models to be shipped to nine different countries on four continents around the world. This will increase the reach to in total 15 countries on five continents.
See the stats page for some more details on the current situation.

In addition we have quite a few events planned for the end of this year and 2014.
Stay tuned for mote updates!

[Update 19 Nov 2013]
It looks like the order can go through with now 23 models on the list!

* this might in fact be the last order we will be allowed to place within the current programme.

The ATLAS LEGO model has found the Higgs, or in fact recent Nobel Prize winner Peter Higgs has found the ATLAS LEGO model. As part of his visit to the University of Manchester, were he received an honorary doctorate degree yesterday evening, Peter Higgs signed the original ATLAS LEGO model, which was brought to Manchester and rebuild by local students the days before.

It is a great honour, certainly a long-lasting memory of this moment and a kind support for our outreach project.

Thank you Peter Higgs and congratulations for both the honorary doctorate degree and of course the Nobel Prize

All images © Craig Strong

It’s time to give out some prizes and announce the winners of our CERN Open Days BYOPD competition. We had an international jury of ATLAS physicist look at all the models and pick their favourites. In addition we have one audience award winner and some prizes for people that took part in the “me and the model” – competition on Facebook.

Continue reading CERN Open Days – Winners →