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Students heading to class in the Duane Physics and Astrophysics building now have a glimpse into the world’s largest particle detectors in a new mural painted by Veronica Keff.��

A senior in astrophysical and planetary sciences and a self-taught artist, Keff is bringing the detectors to life in the east stairwell of the classroom wing.����

The mural depicts two major particle detectors operating at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle collider that stretches in a loop over 16 miles long, near Geneva, Switzerland. Both experiments in the mural – the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment and the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) experiment, are global collaborations with significant CU Boulder participation by researchers in the High Energy Physics Group.��

Keff worked with several physics faculty members including Keith Ulmer and Jamie Nagle, to understand the technical components of the massive CMS and ATLAS detectors – and how best to visually portray them.��

Veronica Keff adds detail to the mural. (Image: Veronica Lingo)

The left side of the mural features a cross-section of the CMS detector, offering a peek into the complex wiring and sensors that make up the enormous instrument. Measuring 21 meters long, 15 meters in diameter, and weighing 12,000 tons, the CMS detector is quite “compact” considering what it contains. It houses a 4-Tesla superconducting solenoid magnet, a force about 100,000 times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field.��

On the right, Keff illustrated the particle tracks which demonstrated the existence of the Higgs boson, a fundamental particle that was confirmed for the first time by the CMS and ATLAS experiments at CERN in 2012.��

First proposed nearly 50 years earlier, the Higgs was the final piece of the puzzle in the Standard Model, the theory that governs fundamental particles and their interactions. The Higgs field is what gives mass to particles like electrons and quarks.

The Higgs boson particle itself has such a short life that it cannot be detected directly. Once formed, it quickly breaks apart into other common particles. It’s also very rare: the Higgs boson only appears in about one in 40 million particle collisions. Scientists at CERN found evidence of the Higgs by analyzing trillions of collisions and tracing particles left behind by its decay. The discovery was announced on July 4, 2012.��

The inspiration

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector at CERN. (Image: CERN)

Event display from the ATLAS experiment during the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012. (Image: CERN)

Though she has never formally studied art, Keff has always been passionate about both science and art, ever since she was a kid. In recent years, she has highlighted the importance of conveying science through art to engage the public.

“I have always seen art and science as two sides of the same coin, and their duality is what grants both depth and meaning to the world around us,” said Keff.

����I have always seen art and science as two sides of the same coin, and their duality is what grants both depth and meaning to the world around us." - Veronica Keff

Several years ago, she got her first mural gig painting Jupiter’s Galilean moons in the bathrooms at CU Boulder’s Fiske Planetarium.

Last year, Keff was accepted to , a NASA and Arizona State University visual arts internship. The program hosts 16 undergraduates from around the country as they develop artistic and creative works showcasing the science and engineering behind NASA’s mission to the metallic asteroid 16 Psyche.

She produced four original works through the program and credits that experience for boosting her confidence to take on a larger project – the murals in the physics building.

Bringing art to Duane Physics

Veronica Keff works on the cross-section of the CMS detector. (Image: Veronica Lingo)

Keff brought her mural ideas in a proposal to Tobin Munsat, chair of physics, and Dave Brain, chair of astrophysical and planetary sciences.

“When Veronica brought this idea to us, I was excited at the prospect of making the building a more cheerful and vibrant place by depicting the scientific research that people in the building are engaging in,” said Brain.

As part of the Art Buffs Collective, a new campus initiative designed to center art in all academic, personal and professional worlds, Keff received funding to work on the project.

And with enthusiastic support from both departments, and with help from facilities management, Keff got the green light to start painting.

She started on the east stairwell mural over the summer, spending many days sketching, envisioning, and painting. Keff used a virtual reality headset to help check the size and scale of the mural.

“I used an app called Contour where you upload a picture and place it around you in a three-dimensional space,” she said. “It helped lay out exactly where the mural would go.”

The east stairwell mural is the first in a series of projects Keff proposed for the physics building. In the coming months, she plans to paint an astrophysics-themed mural featuring various components of a galaxy's spectrum, the elements of which can be traced to processes of star formation, accretion of dust and gas, as well as supernovae.

Reflecting on the process, Keff hopes her art helps bring some of CU Boulder’s research to life. “I wanted to show that even though there are individual projects and niche focus areas, it all comes together in the big picture.”

Portraying scientific concepts can be challenging, but Keff hopes people will appreciate the scale, color, and beauty of this complex research. She added, “the more we represent the beauty of what scientific research can be, the more people will realize its value and potential.”��

Veronica Keff paints the mural in the Duane Physics and Astrophysics building. (Image: Veronica Lingo)