Atomium is designed by AndrX Waterkeyn - each ball in the body-centred cubic arrangement is about 18 m in size. The "bonds" are made of steel. The whole structure is more than 100 m tall. The crystal structure is supposed to represent iron in one of its allotropic forms. If the structure accurately is cubic, then it would represent iron at a temperature between the Curie temperature (769oC) and 911.5oC, or between 1394 and 1538oC. But below the Curie temperature, because the iron becomes ferromagnetic with magnetic moments aligned, say to [001], it becomes slightly tetragonal, in which rotations about [100] and [010] must be combined with time reversal to preserve the directions of the spins.
Atomium was built as a part of the Brussels World Expo of 1958. It is engrained in the Belgian memory as the moment the country was back on its feet after the trauma of the second world war. There was a feeling of optimism and belief in the future. The golden sixties beckoned. Atomium was the emblematic image of this age of hope.
Photographs courtesy of Leo Kestens and Alexey Gervasyev.
 Atomium - Brussels, Belgium |  Atomium - Brussels, Belgium |
 Atomium - Brussels, Belgium |  Atomium - Brussels, Belgium |
 Atomium - Brussels, Belgium |  Atomium - Brussels, Belgium |
 Atomium - Brussels, Belgium |  Atomium - Brussels, Belgium |
 Atomium - Brussels, Belgium |  Atomium - Brussels, Belgium |
 Atomium - Brussels, Belgium |  Atomium - Brussels, Belgium |
 Atomium - Brussels, Belgium |
 4th edition, 2017 |
 Free download |
 Free download |
 Published 2022 |
 Available |
 Available |
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