CERN: TIME LOOP
PROPOSAL: A permanent installation spanning 17 miles, two countries, and 13.8 billion years, Time Loop is a journey back in time, made aboveground along the full footprint of the Large Hadron Collider. Time will be measured out over the distance, to be experienced physically through a 17-mile walk. Starting above the ALICE experiment, which looks at the few seconds after the Big Bang, one could opt to walk off into the present amidst corresponding vegetation (for instance, Ginkgo trees at the 250-million-year mark; a biological clock of sorts), descending back in time through geologic eras, back before life began, before the solar system formed, and on; the journey ending with the Big Bang. Or beginning there. One could set off in the other direction, walking for nearly 10 billion years before the Earth is even formed.
By committing to the physical challenge of a 17-mile walk, TIME LOOP creates a means to connect with a timescale that is otherwise too abstract for us to synthesize in a personal way.