Virtual tours: Experience the HZB in 360 degrees!
Unfortunately, due to Corona, we are currently unable to receive groups of visitors at HZB and guide them through our centre. Despite Corona, we would like to provide you with insights into HZB. Simply follow our 360-degree tours and experience how we conduct research at the BESSY II accelerator. Further tours are being planned.
"Make yourself comfortable and start your own virtual tour through our world of research! We invite you to move through the 360-degree worlds and pause at one station or another to discover something new," says Sandra Fischer from the Communications Department. She designed and realised the tours together with an external partner.
The first tour is through the BESSY II accelerator facility. Further tours, also at the Wannsee site, are being planned. "With this offer, we want to remain open to interested people even in times of a pandemic and arouse curiosity about the world of science."
Tour through the BESSY II accelerator: Follow the path of light
Have you always wanted to walk through an accelerator? The tours "The Path of Light" and "The Experiment" both start in the heart of BESSY II, the control room. Go to the place where electrons race through and emit light at almost the speed of light - the storage ring tunnel. There you will see the effort that has to be made to generate the coveted light. You can experience all the things we can explore with this light in the tour "The Experiment".
Here you get to the tour. We hope you enjoy it!
Note for our cooperation partners at BESSY II:
360-degree views ("spherical panoramas") of various beamlines are available in the media library. You are welcome to use these to explain your work at BESSY II (e.g. in lectures or for groups of visitors). If you have any questions, please contact Sandra Fischer.
- Joint power instead of duplicate structures:Berlin’s research community is further advancing its research excellence by establishing a high-performance, cross-institutional infrastructure for data and AI. With a joint agreement signed on 18 September 2026, the Berlin University Alliance (BUA), the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB) are paving the way for a joint data science and AI centre in Berlin-Dahlem and Adlershof.
- New technique could make MRI more preciseA team of researchers at the University of Stuttgart and HZB has developed a new method that could make MRI even more precise by eliminating “dead time,” a key limiting factor in the measurement process, thereby enabling the detection of signals that are lost using conventional methods. This method opens up new possibilities for medical diagnostics and non-destructive materials testing. The research team presents the new approach in Science Advances.
- Marcel Risch has been appointed Professor at the Freie Universität BerlinMarcel Risch was appointed to a W2-S professorship in the Department of Physics at Freie Universität Berlin in August 2026. His research group has been transformed into the department 'Mechanisms of Sustainable Electrocatalysis'. Risch investigates the fundamental mechanisms of electrocatalytic reactions and, on this basis, develops knowledge- and data-driven strategies to improve electrocatalysts for the sustainable production of hydrogen, fuels and chemicals.