Big Bang Day

10th September 2008 became Big Bang Day on BBC Radio 4 when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) inspired an entire day’s programming.

Big Bang Day included the Great Big Particle Adventure series by comedian and former quantum physicist Ben Miller and highlighted women with careers in science and engineering on Woman’s Hour.

Adam Hart-Davies examined the engineering behind the LHC and the day even inspired drama output with a one-off radio version of Torchwood, set at CERN and starring John Barrowman.

CERN physicist and former D:Ream band member, Professor Brian Cox, also took part by interviewing lesser known particle physics enthusiasts such as actors Alan Alda and Eddie Izzard.

Around a third of a million people viewed the celebrity videos either on the Radio 4 website or YouTube with the Big Bang Day website emerging as the most popular Radio 4 site that week. It attracted over two million page impressions, more than double the usual, with almost 600,000 people alone visiting the Today Programme website.

I had long wanted to find a way to cast a strong beam of journalistic light on pure science and thought CERN – its scale and audacity – was the right focus. I knew that there was a highly disparate group of people obsessed by particle physics – but it was a big extra delight to see how much the Radio 4 audience loved it all.” Mark Damazer, Controller BBC Radio 4.

Big Bang Day information

• BBC Radio 4’s Big Bang Day dedicated a day’s programming to particle physics
  
  
• The Big Bang Day website was Radio 4’s most popular site that week
  
  
• The LHC featured in every major UK news outlet More than 2,000 people submitted questions to the BBC News and Radio 4 websites
  
  
• The LHC switch on was the highest profile physics event in history with estimated one billion TV audience worldwide