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
"It is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."

- Charles Darwin

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.

Northern Europe

 * Sweden Solar System in greater Stockholm, contains the world's largest scale model of the Solar System.
 * Stockholm environmentalist tour features the capital of Sweden as a forerunner in environmentalist opinion and sustainable technology.
 * Stockholm environmentalist tour features the capital of Sweden as a forerunner in environmentalist opinion and sustainable technology.

Central Europe







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

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.

North America






























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.

Europe
Many European countries participate in the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which has their 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.







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.



















Europe





 * Stjerneborg observatory, Hven Island, Sweden - observatory Tycho Brahe's.





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.







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.

Related topics

 * Archaeology
 * Biomes and ecosystems
 * Botanical tourism
 * Carl Linnaeus tourism
 * Golden Age of Modern Physics
 * Industrial tourism
 * Mathematics tourism
 * Nobel tourism
 * Astronomy
 * Northern lights
 * Solar eclipses
 * Space
 * Natural attractions
 * Nuclear tourism
 * Paleontology
 * Steam power
 * Volcanoes