The 27 km machine and the building blocks of the Universe

It promises to take the audience on an accessible and entertaining journey right back to the creation of the Universe.

Dr Cox, a particle physicist at Manchester University and one-time rock star, is a leading researcher on the Large Hadron Collider – a massive project involving 10,000 researchers around the world and based at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) the world's largest particle physics centre, in Geneva.

He is heading an 11-nation team that is building detectors to pick up particles such as the as-yet-undetected “Higgs boson”, the so-called God particle which could help explain why matter has mass.

Born in 1968, Dr Cox combined the study of physics with the pursuit of a parallel career – stardom in a rock band – and became keyboard player for the band D:Ream.

Though his academic life has taken him into the rarefied strata of experimental physics, Dr Cox has kept his feet firmly on the ground when it comes to communicating with the public.

He is a sought-after TV and radio scientist – and a natural performer, who believes that science is not geeky but cool. He is writing a popular science book, and is currently acting as scientific adviser on a feature film, Sunshine, due out in April.

This year Dr Cox and fellow physicists at CERN will switch on the biggest scientific experiment of all time. The Large Hadron Collider will collide tiny beams of protons with the aim of recreating conditions in the Universe less that a billionth of a second after the Big Bang.

The talk “The 27 km machine and the building blocks of the Universe” will take place on March 23 at 7.30 pm, at the Babbage Lecture Theatre on the New Museum Site, University of Cambridge.

No charge and no need to book. Nearest parking at Lion Yard multi-storey.