Science tourism

Science tourism

Science tourism is a travel topic grouping scientific attractions. It covers interests in visiting and exploring scientific landmarks, including museums, laboratories, observatories and universities.

Understand

Most science-related destinations are based on popular science; the presentation of science for a non-professional audience of all ages. Amateur science can be pursued by people without a relevant academic degree or a tenure, and while the "gentleman scientist" is largely a thing of the past, amateur scientists can still make important discoveries in fields such as astronomy.

Scientific expeditions are usually undertaken by scientists who have a doctorate or higher position. See also business travel and working abroad.

Get ready

For the museum sites, check the relevant opening hours and entry fees, where applicable. As many of the listed laboratories have ongoing scientific research, you need a scientific reason to visit a laboratory. Hence you must plan in advance and check for the days when there are special public access opportunities. Observatories are usually open to the public and have tours showcasing their astronomical research.

Most university campuses are open to the general public, though access to the buildings is typically restricted to students and staff. Some universities, however, may have an on-site science museum for the public to view their most significant findings.

Museums

The paleontology article covers some specialized museums, most of which are therefore omitted here.

Europe

Northern Europe

Central Europe

Deutsches Museum

  • Deutsches Museum (German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology), Museumsinsel 1 (S-bahn station Isartor, then follow signs, alternatively U-bahn Fraunhoferstraße Tram 16: Deutsches Museum), 48.13°, 11.583333°, +49 89 21791, information@deutsches-museum.de. Daily 09:00-17:00. Probably the closest anybody is ever going to get to a "museum of everything" or at least a museum of "everything technology" and a whole lot more. One of the greatest scientific and technical museums in the world, it is one of the most important sights in the area and absolute "must see's" of Munich, visited by roughly 1.5 million visitors per year. Topics range from aviation to brewing, from computer sciences to bridge building. There are many guided tours on specific themes and in different languages. There is a planetarium and two branch offices in other locations, which show vehicles that found no place in downtown Munich. Adults €14.00, concessions €4.50

  • Phaeno Science Centre, Willy Brandt Platz 1 (just south of the railway line and the canal opposite Autostadt), 52.42903°, 10.79045°. Tu-F 09:00-17:00, Sa Su 10:00-18:00, open on some Mondays and most holidays. What to do in a city built for and by a car company when you couldn't care less about cars? Well in that case a visit to this "Science Center" is an absolute must. Housed in a relatively new building designed by Zaha Hadid with quite bold architecture (though your mileage may vary on the "naked concrete"). While the architecture was a bit controversial with locals at the time of its construction, the museum - focused on science and the likes - is a good place to take the kids to but also a fun place for adults to "toy around" with their inner child, observing and exploring phenomena as diverse as fire tornadoes, brain waves or vacuum. Adult €12.50, child €8, reduced €9.50, half the price 90 min before closure

  • The city of Friedrichshafen offers a museum dedicated to zeppelins and another to Dornier aircraft.

Western Europe

  • Science Museum London, 51.4975°, -0.174722°, +44 870 870 4868.

  • The Down House, Luxted Road, Downe, Kent, BR6 7JT, England, 51.331389°, 0.053333°, +44 1689 859119. Opening hours vary according seasons, on open days 10:00-16:00. This place has a unique piece in the history of science as the theory of evolution by natural selection got worked out here. A visit of the home of the English naturalist Charles Darwin allows glimpses in his life. Darwin wrote 'On the Origin of Species' in this house. The house has also carnivorous plants and exotic orchids. adults £10.00, children £6.00, concessions £9.00

  • James Clerk Maxwell's Birthplace and Museum, 14 India Street, Edinburgh, EH3 6EZ, UK, 55.9552507°, -3.2057174°. The house in which James Clerk Maxwell was born is open to visitors by appointment. Visits for up to twelve people are conducted by volunteers and take approximately 1 hour; there are four steps up to the main door. Edinburgh's answer to Newton and Einstein. His equations unified the forces of electricity and magnetism and paved the way for Einstein's theory of special relativity. From the website "Modern technology, in large part, stems from his grasp of the basic principles of the universe. Wide ranging developments in the field of electricity and electronics, including radio, television, radar and communications, derive from Maxwell's discovery of the laws of the electromagnetic field - which was not a synthesis of what was known before, but rather a fundamental change in concept that departed from Newton's view and was to influence greatly the modern scientific and industrial revolution." #nerdcator. Free, donations welcome 2016-10-30

Southern Europe

Eastern Europe

  • In the outskirts of Moscow there are a couple of sites dedicated to the Soviet and Russian contributions to science and technology. These include the Memorial Museum of Astronautics, the All-Russia Exhibition Centre and the Monument to the Conquerors of Space. While you're there, check out the 540-m-high concrete transmission tower, Ostankino Tower.
  • Akademgorodok, 54.8500°, 83.1036°. Out in the Siberian taiga near Novosibirsk, Akademgorodok (literally "academy town") was built during the Soviet era, so that the academic elite could conduct their research in relative freedom, prosperity, and isolation. The planned city with tree lined streets hosts several museums, institutes, as well as a beach on the Ob Sea, an artificial reservoir.

North America

Oceania

  • Powerhouse Museum, 500 Harris Street, Ultimo, -33.878611°, 151.199444°, +61 2 9217 0111. 10:00-17:00 daily. The Powerhouse Museum is a large museum, essentially of popular culture. It has displays on the history of fashion and transport, decorative arts, music, and space exploration exhibits. It also partly plays on a sci-tech theme, with interactive hands-on and discovery displays of technology, design and industry There is usually a special exhibition on as well. There are in-depth displays for all ages, but also displays especially created for young children to discover and play. $10 adults, $5 children
  • Questacon (The National Science and Technology Centre), King Edward Terrace, Parkes, Canberra, -35.298056°, 149.131389°. Questacon is an interactive museum of science with exhibits illustrating scientific ideas from the principles of physics to the motion of an earthquake. Great for kids and excellent science books can be picked up here. Allow at least half a day.

South America

  • Alcântara, in Northeast Brazil, is the rocket launch site for the Brazilian Space Agency, and hosts a museum on the site
  • Kourou in French Guiana hosts the Guiana Space Centre, the primary rocket launch site for the European Space Agency.
  • Bogotá in Colombia, has some of the most interesting museums, Gold Museum, and The Archeology Museum: Casa Marqués de San Jorge.

Asia

Laboratories

CERN Aerial View of LHC accelerator and it's experiments (Lake Geneva in the background)

Europe

Many European countries participate on the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which has his laboratories including the famous Large Hadron Collider on the French/Swiss border. Plus the bigger European countries like France, Germany, Italy and UK operate national laboratories. Most laboratories have open days for public visits.

  • Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA), 48.725135°, 2.150346°. The CEA has 5 divisions: nuclear energy, technological research, life sciences, sciences of matter and military applications. It has one of the top 100 supercomputers in the world, the Tera-100.

  • CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland (Tram 18, final stop "CERN"), 46.234167°, 6.052778°, +41 22 767 4052, visits.service@cern.ch. At CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, physicists and engineers are probing the fundamental structure of the universe. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest experiment and most complex scientific accelerator. Founded in 1954, the CERN laboratory sits astride the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. The weak force got discovered here in 1973 and in 1983 subsequently the W and Z bosons. In 1995 it created the first Anti-Hydrogen atoms of which the ASACUSA experiment can since 2014 produce a beam of. In 2012 the ATLAS and CMS experiment announced the discovery of a boson with 125 GeV, whose properties got confirmed to be the long-sought Higgs boson.

    • Microcosm, 46.23394°, 6.05573°. M-F 08:30-17:30, Sa 09:00-17:00 (some exceptional closures at holidays). In front of the entrance of the CERN laboratory there is a permanent exposition retracing its history. free of charge
    • CERN Guided Tours. Both as individual or as group it is possible from time to time to visit the experiments.

  • DESY (Short for "Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron" ("German Electron Synchroton")), Notkestraße 85 D-22607 Hamburg (Hamburg), 53.575833°, 9.879444°, +49 40 8998-0, desyinfo@desy.de. They have a secondary location in a southern suburb of Berlin.

  • FAIR (short for "Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research"), 49.931389°, 8.679167°. As of 2018 their main research facilities are still under construction with hopes of being able to run 80% of experiments by 2023 and 100% by 2025.

  • Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, 42.420566°, 13.516424°.

  • National Physical Laboratory, Hampton Road, Teddington, UK (Buses 281, 285, R68, 33, 481 and X26 serve Teddington, trains from London Waterloo ~30 min), 51.426389°, -0.343611°. The National Physical Laboratory is the birthplace of atomic timekeeping. In the 1950s, Louis Essen and John Parry constructed the atomic clock, Caesium Mk. 1. This new clock kept time more accurately. It paved the way for redefining the second in 1967, based on the fundamental properties of CS atoms, rather than the quite irregular Earth rotation. The facilities in Teddington are among the world's most extensive and sophisticated for measurement science. While children are allowed, the exhibits are aimed for adults, and children must be kept under adult supervision at all times. free - registration required

  • Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (ALT), Chilton, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, 51.573333°, -1.314722°, +44 1235 445000. The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory is a national scientific research laboratories in the UK operated by the Science and Technology Facilities Council. It is a multidisciplinary centre for research both in physical and life sciences. It had in 1957 a 50 MeV proton linear accelerator. RAL hosts ISIS, a spallation neutron source and the Central Laser Facility. RAL organises a monthly public scientific lecture: Talking Science. free, registration required

North America

DOE Laboratories

In the United States of America overseen by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) the Office of science operates ten national laboratories. In total there are 17 national laboratories funded by the DOE. Most of the sites hold open houses where the public can come in for free and see how American tax dollars are invested in research. This used to include nuclear facilities, but those have been restricted since 9/11.

  • Ames Laboratory (Ames Lab), Iowa, USA (Iowa State University campus), 42.0305°, -93.6482°, +1 515 294-9750, breehan@ameslab.gov. Ames Laboratory conducts research into various areas, including the synthesis and study of new materials, energy resources, high-speed computer design, and environmental cleanup and restoration. The Ames Project purpose was to produce high purity uranium to accompany the Manhattan Project. Its most notable faculty member Dan Shechtman won the 2011 Chemistry Nobel prize. Contact the Lab in advance of your visit. Group tours can be arranged through the public affairs office.

  • Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne), 9700 S. Cass Avenue Argonne, Illinois, USA (Metra train to the Westmont Metra station + PACE bus #715), 41.709166°, -87.981992°, +1 630 252-5562, tours@anl.gov. Argonne National Laboratory was founded in 1946 to carry out Enrico Fermi's work on nuclear reactors as part of the Manhattan Project. Today Argonne is a multidisciplinary science and engineering research center, to address vital national challenges in clean energy, environment, technology and national security. Argonne welcomes all members of the public age 16 or older to take guided tours of the scientific and engineering facilities and grounds. Tours last about two and a half hours and are by reservation only (call or email).

  • Brookhaven National Laboratory (Brookhaven Lab), William Floyd Parkway, County Road 46, Long Island, New York, USA (Ronkokoma station from the Long Island Rail Road (LIR) + Taxi), 40.873346°, -72.872057°. Brookhaven National Laboratory is a multipurpose research institution funded primarily by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Brookhaven Lab operates large-scale facilities for studies in physics, chemistry, biology, medicine and applied science. It is the home of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, which first observed/created the Quark-Gluon-Plasma. Brookhaven scientists won 7 Nobel prizes including the Ribosome discovery (2009). The lab is open to the public on Sundays during the summer for tours and special programs.

  • Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), Kirk Road and Pine Street in Batavia, Illinois, USA, 41.831944°, -88.257222°, +1 630 840-8258, fermilab@fnal.gov. Apr-Oct: 8AM-8PM, Nov-Mar: 8AM-6PM. Fermilab is a US Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Hence many components of the Large Hadron Collider got engineered and tested here. The Top quark was discovered in 1995 by both the CDF and DØ experiments of the Tevatron accelerator at Fermilab. The 2008 Nobel prize was given for the prediction of the third generation of quarks (Bottom and Top quarks). Fermilab visitors are allowed to visit two buildings on their own: the first and ground floor of Wilson Hall and the Lederman Science Center, Groups of six or more must book a visit by calling the Center.

  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), San Francisco, California, USA (Lab bus from the Berkeley downtown BART station, otherwise 15-min walk uphill), 37.877004°, -122.24655°. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) was founded in 1931 by Ernest Orlando Lawrence. 13 Nobel prizes have been awarded to LBNL scientists, the most recent one (2011) for the discovery of the accelerated expansion of the Universe. It started as a particle physics laboratory, became involved for the study of nuclear matter and discovered 16 chemical elements. It is today a multi-program research site. Visitors need special clearance or may take advantage of the open days. The site on top of the hill nicely overlooks the San Francisco Bay.

  • Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA (7 miles from the center of the city of Oak Ridge), 35.933333°, -84.316667°, +1 865 574-7199, ORNLvisit@ornl.gov. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a multiprogram science and energy laboratory, with scientific and technical capabilities spanning from basic to applied research. ORNL is famous to host the Titan supercomputer. The Spallation Neutron Source is an accelerator-based neutron source facility that provides the most intense pulsed neutron beams in the world for scientific research and industrial development. Oak Ridge National Laboratory hosts thousands of visitors every year. It is very important, if you are not a DOE or DOE contractor employee, to arrange your visit to ORNL ahead of time.

  • Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), 902 Battelle Boulevard, Richland, Washington, USA, 46.343224°, -119.276333°. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has many research projects for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the National Nuclear Security Administration. All PNNL visitors, regardless of nationality, will need to have visitor badges to go past the Lobby.

  • Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), 100 Stellarator Road Princeton, New Jersey, USA (NJ Transit Northeast Corridor line train (southbound) to Trenton Station; switch to the SEPTA R7 train to Philadelphia; from the West Trenton Station (I-95 south, exit 2, Bear Tavern Road south) take the SEPTA R3 train to Philadelphia), 40.348825°, -74.602183°, +1 609 243-2000, jjackson@pppl.gov. M-F 09:00-14:00. Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory researches plasma physics and nuclear fusion science. PPPL is located on Princeton University's Forrestal Campus. The free tours are led by engineers and physicists who can answer questions about magnetic fusion. In order to visit email to request a tour and give PPPL two weekdays when you would like to visit and some background on your group, including where your group is from, how many people are in your group, the age-range and the educational background of your group.

  • SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, SLAC), Sand Hill Road, Stanford, USA, 37.414722°, -122.221667°. The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory does experimental and theoretical research in elementary particle physics using electron beams and a broad program of research in atomic and solid-state physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine using synchrotron radiation. It discovered the charm quark, the quark structure inside the protons and neutrons and the tau lepton (3 Nobel prizes). As of April 2021, all public and educational tours of the laboratory have been suspended. SLAC hopes to have them back and asks to check their website periodically for updates.

  • Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab), Newport News, Virginia, USA, 37.0947°, -76.4817°, openhouse2014@jlab.org. Open house one day in May 9AM-3PM. The Jefferson Lab main facility is the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, which is 1400 m in length and accelerates electrons up to 6 GeV. The most powerful free-electron laser in the world has an output of over 14 kilowatts. The lab has an open house once a year that includes a tour of the accelerator tunnel and the free electron laser. No registration of visitors is required during the open house. The open house tours involve extended periods of walking, and many tour stops include stairs. Also, much of the event is outdoors. Free

Other laboratories

  • Bell Labs building (Manhattan). For much of the early 20th century, this building was home to Bell Telephone Laboratories and was the largest industrial research facility in the US. A long list of inventions such as talking movies, TV (black/white and color), radar, the vacuum tube, and the transistor came from this lab. The High Line railroad actually went through the building in a tunnel, although the more recent High Line linear park does not reach this far south. After Bell Labs moved out in 1966, the building was remodeled as the Westbeth Artists’ Housing complex.
  • Biosphere 2, 32540 A Biosphere Rd, Mile marker 96.5, Oracle, Arizona, USA (30 min north of Tucson on Hwy 77), 32.578778°, -110.850594°, +1 520-838-6139, dunlapc@email.arizona.edu. 9AM-4PM daily, no reservations required. This facility was designed as an artificially closed complete ecology, and was the setting for research on human interaction with natural systems. The site is now owned and maintained by the University of Arizona, which conducts tours for the public. The scientific credentials of the initial project phase are quite unclear as it started as theatre group. For example no input was taken from the Antarctic research stations, where researchers experience extreme confinement. $20/adults, $13/children
  • McMurdo Station, -77.85°, 166.666667°. An American research station that doubles as the largest community in Antarctica. 2018-11-20

Observatories

See also: Astronomy

Europe

North America

South America

While the headquarters of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) are in Garching near Munich, Germany the observatories are located in northern Chile.

  • ESO La Silla Observatory, Coquimbo Region, Chile, -29.256529°, -70.738098°, information@eso.org. La Silla Observatory is on the outskirts of the Chilean Atacama Desert, 600 km north of Santiago de Chile and at an altitude of 2400 metres. 2019-03-14

  • ESO Paranal Observatory, Cerro Paranal, Chile, -24.634979°, -70.4028359°, information@eso.org. At 2635 metres above sea level in the Atacama Desert of Chile, ESO’s Paranal Observatory is one of the best astronomical observing sites in the world and is the flagship facility for European ground-based astronomy. 2019-03-14

  • ESO/NAOJ/NRAO ALMA, Llano de Chajnantor, Chile, -23.01928°, -67.75318°. High on the Chajnantor plateau in the Chilean Andes, the European Southern Observatory (ESO), together with its international partners, is operating the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) — a state-of-the-art telescope to study light from some of the coldest objects in the Universe. 2019-03-14

Africa

South Africa

  • SALT Telescope (Southern African Large Telescope), -32.376006°, 20.810678°. The largest single optical telescope in the southern hemisphere and among the largest in the world. 2017-03-15
  • KAT-7, MeerKAT, PAPER, and SKA Africa, -30.721°, 21.411°. The SKA Telescope is the most powerful telescope ever conceived. Its precursor, MeerKAT, is already the most powerful telescope every built. Most of it is to be built in Africa under the auspices of SKA Africa. The core of the telescope is located near Carnarvon, on the Northern Cape, with more dishes located in Botswana, Madagascar, Mozambique, Zambia, Namibia, Mauritius and Ghana. 2017-03-15
  • South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO), -32.379444°, 20.810556°. The national centre for optical and infrared astronomy in South Africa. The Observatory has a fascinating history dating back to 1820, which is when the main building was constructed, making it one of the oldest permanent structures in Cape Town. Owing to light and air pollution in the city, most of the actual observing happens in Sutherland in the Northern Cape, about 380 km from Cape Town. Some of the telescopes in Cape Town are still used for outreach and public events. 2017-03-15

Namibia

Universities

The most prestigious universities generally attract excellent scientists and have fine science programs. University campuses are usually open to the public, though permission from guards is sometimes required, and there may be some café or cafeteria or mensa or restaurant or even a university shop on site. Universities usually offer public lectures about ongoing research. Otherwise, their seminars and buildings are reserved for the students and the working faculty including post-doctoral researchers or professors. On weekends or holidays, many universities require special permits to enter. Universities compete on a worldwide basis; hence, they are not ordered by geographical position or alphabetized. Below is a list of the 20 highest-ranked universities according to 2013/2014 QS world university ranking (of course rankings may differ according to year and specific subject).

Other

  • Hofmeyr Skull, The Hofmeyr Skull is a specimen of a 36,000-year-old skull found in the 1950s near Hofmeyr, South Africa. The samples age supports the so-called "Out of Africa" theory that modern humans evolved from Africa.
  • Groote Schuur Hospital, On December 3, 1967, 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky received the first human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. The procedure was performed by Dr. Christiaan Barnard.

Talk

Historically, most European scientists had published their findings in Latin. However, this began to change during the Enlightenment, when German, French and English emerged as the main scientific languages. However, German lost its prestige after Germany's defeat in World War I, and French gradually lost its prestige after the collapse of the French Colonial Empire and French global power following World War II. During the Cold War, Russian emerged as one of the main scientific languages, but also lost its significance following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since then, virtually all significant scientific findings have been published in English, and even non-English-speaking countries tend to produce more scientific publications in English than in their native languages. As such, all reputable scientists will generally have at least some command of English, even if English is otherwise not widely spoken in their countries. Much like Latin in the olden days, English as used by scientists has developed some... idiosyncratic pronunciations influenced by the native tongues of the scientists in question - sometimes at international scientific conferences it is the native speakers who will have difficulty understanding others and making themselves understood while the non-native speakers with diverse native languages have no problems communicating in English. A similar phenomenon can be observed in the EU which lost its last officially English-speaking member (Ireland, Malta and Cyprus all have a different "first" official language than English) with Brexit and where a lot of communication nevertheless occurs in "EU English".

Publications, conferences and seminars

Scientific findings are generally published in the form of peer-reviewed journal articles, and these are the benchmark through which most scientists are judged when applying for jobs, while PhD students in the sciences are generally required to publish these in order to graduate. The most prestigious journals are Science and Nature, which publish weekly and cover the full range of scientific disciplines, as well as Cell, which publishes twice a month and specialises in the life sciences. Publication in the aforementioned journals is extremely competitive and difficult, and outside the top universities of the world, most scientists go through their entire careers without ever publishing in one of these. That said, there have also been cases of scientists winning Nobel prizes despite publishing in much less prestigious journals. Collections of these journals are held in many university libraries. While you can in theory pay for subscriptions to one or more of these journals, most of the research articles go into too much technical jargon to be comprehensible to the general public. That said, both Science and Nature publish news and editorial articles that are written in a form that is much easier for people without specialist knowledge to understand.

As an alternative to reading scientific journals, consider reading scientific magazines. These typically take the latest and most important findings and distill them into a form that is more comprehensible to the general public. Examples of such magazines include New Scientist and Scientific American.

Scientists also often travel to conferences in order to present their work in person and network with fellow scientists from around the world. Conferences are often tailored towards a very specific scientific discipline. While these are in theory open to anyone who is willing to pay the conference registration fee, the presentations and discussions usually go into so much technical detail and jargon that they would be virtually incomprehensible to somebody without specialist training.

An alternative to going to a conference is to attend a public lecture, in which leading scientists are sometimes asked to present their work in a form that is more accessible to the general public. Universities often also host scientists to give a seminar, and while often open to the general public, these are generally targeted towards fellow scientists in the same broad area of specialization, and would be difficult for people without specialist training to understand.

Increasingly the public communication of science is seen as an important field of science all its own and several scientists are more known for their public communication of phenomena in their field than their scientific publications. As it is of course difficult to strike a balance between simplification of complex phenomena so a general audience can understand it and not being wrong (or creating the wrong impression) some scientists dislike those colleagues who are in the media too often. Other scientists combine science communication with entertainment and there are science-based or science-adjacent stage shows, comedy routines, podcasts and the likes.