Current mood:

happy

A post from CERN...blowing up the world...or something
So as my entry from yesterday might have suggested, today I'm spending the day at CERN.  My day here hasn't been extremely eventful, but the idea of it is pretty exciting.

I met up with three other people from LAPP who were shuttling over here around 9h this morning, outside the labo.  The drive took about an hour-- it really is a pretty drive too, all through the mountains and French country side.  En fait, it's actually the same drive I rode on when Lucia drove me from Saint Genis to LAPP, but I think I was slightly less jetlagged/travel-shocked this time.  At one point we drove over this big canyon on a bridge, and to our left was another bridge-- really old looking with castle-y type buildings at the ends.

Upon arriving at CERN, I followed Thibault (I think that's how his name is spelled, and Margaz (Armenian, not French) up to the office where LAPP people get to hang out.  After a small fiasco of attempting to guest register my laptop so I could access the CERN network and the internet, (Thibault is my very official CERN contact person, he gave the extremely official okay to let me online, ha.) I spent some time downloading an ssh thing to let me on the LAPP server so I could work on LAPP computery stuff...I did manage to get on that computer from mine, but I don't have the right window viewing software (from what I can understand) so I'm unable to actually do anything useful here.  Bummer, but oh well-- at least I actually managed to get online.  Pierre-Antoine wasn't even sure if I'd be able to do that, and as he said, I can afford to loose a day.  In result, I'm gaining lots of lost time on my random internet wanderings.  

We ate lunch over at Restaurant 1 (there are multiple restaurants at CERN).  I didn't quite catch it, but I'm pretty sure Margaz pointed out that one of the guys sitting at an outside table was a Nobel Prize winner.  I didn't catch the name at that time, but even so, that's pretty cool.  Eating in this cafeteria/type restaurant really impressed upon me how big CERN actually is.  This restaurant (of which there are several, like I said) is comparable in size, or bigger than the Brody or Shaw cafeterias, and it was bustling with people.  All of those people are working on some aspect of the physics experiments here, and are networked with who knows how many other groups of researchers around the globe.  This is huge.

A bit later in the afternoon, Margaz had to go to a meeting, and as it was sort of in the same direction, he walked with me to a place where he could point me in the direction of Microcosm, the museum here.  We passed a group of CERN summer students playing frisbee.  Margaz apparently did the CERN summer student program a couple of years ago-- he said you attend lectures for about half the summer, and spend the rest working with an advisor on some research project.  It sounds like it would be a cool experience.  

The museum was cool, colorful, and not crowded at all.  In fact, I think most of the time I was there, I was the only person wandering around the exhibits.  I took a few pictures-- some, as I am lame, in the fake LHC tunnel setup. I can pretend, right?  The coolest thing there was this setup of spark chambers that would go off when cosmic rays passed through them.  I know I've been told however many times in the past that tons of these high energy cosmic rays are passing through our bodies every second, but it's one thing to hear that, and another to actually see the paths those particles make setting off the spark chambers every couple of seconds.  Let it be known, I have seen comsic rays!  There was also a setup of a scanning table-- a sort of overhead thing that was used to analyze bubble chamber images before electronic detectors were developed.  I always have thought bubble chamber pictures look cool-- sort of contemporary art-ish, in a nerdy sciencey way, ha.  Though thank goodness for computers...looking at the projected image on that scanning table made my eyes hurt, I can't imagine trying analyze things on it.  

Well, I think I'm going to quit rambling for now-- something about the way I sit when I'm typing knots up the muscles in the back left part of my neck/shoulder.  Rawr to that.

But yes, a day at CERN, it's pretty sweet.  (I think I'm here until around 6ish.)