Real Life with the Taylors: CERN

And now... the moment you've all been waiting for! Our visit to CERN!

CERN is an acronym for the European Council for Nuclear Research. Well... the French version of that name. Basically, CERN is a nuclear research facility. Founded during the Cold War, it is an international project to use nuclear science for peaceful proposes. The really big deal about it is its Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Note that that is Large with a capital L. The collider is at 27 km (yes, kilometer) ring that makes atomic particles go really, really, really fast so that they can run into each other and break apart. It's this breaking apart that the scientists like to study.

Around the LHC are four detectors that show the scientists what happens when the particles collide. We were here to see the Atlas detector.

Artistic representation of the Atlas detector

What is the first thing to do on a nerdy day? Dress like a nerd. This scarf/pashmina has absolutely nothing to do with the sweater I'm wearing, but sometimes packing doesn't go as planned and you're tired of carrying a coat around, so you make do. Glasses are always helpful in the nerd look. Hard-hat for coolness and safety. They're red to show that we're visitors. Callie is a much better-dressed nerd than I am.

We didn't get to have a tour just because our friends work there... almost anyone can sign up for a tour, as long as they sign up months in advance. We didn't. That's where the friend connection comes in.

This is the control room. Our tour guide told them we were going down, and how many of us would be down there, and had to get clearance. The LHC is shut down for awhile for maintenance right now. When it is running, this control room is full. Also, when it's running, YOU DON'T GO SEE THE DETECTOR. Holy radiation, Batman!

After a ride down, down, down, in an elevator and a walk through a huge room full of servers, we were in this passageway. Through that yellow door at the end of the hall is Atlas. Are you excited?

And here it is!!

As with so many things, it is difficult to capture the scale in pictures. Look for the ladders/ stairs to give you a better idea.

Let me just take this moment to point out that I am definitely the least qualified person in the picture below to be telling you about the LHC. Obviously David and Callie should be telling you, since they work and study here. As physics majors, Tim and Kelly took Modern Physics and learned about particle physics things, and even visited the more local Argon and Fermi labs.

I, on the other hand, learned about CERN when I read Angels and Demons. Yeah... it's true. Not the most scientific way to learn about it, but that's what happened. I honestly don't know how accurate Angels and Demons was on nuclear physics, but it was a good book. You should read it!

After we resurfaced, we got to see things from a different angle. The picture below is looking down. The green thing you see is the fencing that keeps you from falling down there, since you're standing over a giant hole.

Zoomed in.

That view was looking 100 m down. So we were standing above (not beside, above) a 100 m drop.

However, friends, CERN is good for more than just nuclear physics.

Yep... where the web was born!

This paper is in the museum at CERN. It is the proposal for the world wide web. There is a hand-written note on the top. Can you read what it says?

"Vague, but interesting..."

I love it! I wonder what I would have said if someone had proposed the interwebz to me before it came to be...

CERN has a really neat museum that I didn't absorb very much of. I was kind of sleepy. I was hoping I could learn all about the LHC and how it works--and I probably could have-- but I was so tired. When you visit CERN, I would recommend visiting the museum before you go see the detector. It might help you appreciate what you are seeing a little more.

After lunch at the CERN cafeteria, we hoped across the border to France to get some pain au chocolat. Yummy!