A visit to CERN, and celebrating Swiss National Day

Friday, 1 August was doubly awesome. First off, it was a holiday for Swiss National Day, and secondly, the whole Korbel in Geneva crew took the tram out to CERN and took a tour!! To top it all off, it was the first truly sunny and warm day that Geneva had seen in many weeks. What a way to start off the new month!

The floor in the reception area of CERN. The lights moved and changed colors. :)

CERN was absolutely amazing. I still cannot believe we actually got to go in there and see what we saw! We had a private tour with one of CERN's particle physicists. He gave us a brief starter lecture on particle physics (where we also learned that CERN was the real inventor of the internet- true story!), let us visit the interactive visitor's center for a while, and then we went into the headquarters of the ATLAS Experiment particle collider. During this last part, we watched a brief video about how the ATLAS was built and put together 92 meters underground in the early 2000s, and then we got to take an elevator 80 meters (262 feet) underground and SEE the dang thing!!! The ATLAS Experiment is not currently colliding any particles or running any tests (they're on break from Spring 2013 - Spring 2015), so that's why we could go down to see it.

The outside of the visitor's center.

"Tron" chairs with personal sound systems and narrators that whisper to you about science.

CERN:The future is now.

Silicone pixel detectors, to detect charged particles after collision.

Crystal detectors, to show "showers" of new particles after collison.

I loved the visitor center. It was so futuristic!

Cross-section of some LHC magnets

This had a display of visualizations of the resulting tracks from various particle collisions.

The ATLAS Experiment Control Room

The official ATLAS Experiment welcome mat.

An artsy cross-section of an example of a particle collision in the ATLAS Experiment, at 60% of the actual size of ATLAS.

Side view of the same, also at 60% of ATLAS' actual size!

It was absolutely incredible and mind-blowing to be able to see one of the particle collision machines that makes up the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The LHC is the world's largest and most powerful particle collider. It's located 92 meters (302 feet) underground, is 27km (11 miles) in circumference, and is located under the borders of Swizerland and France. ATLAS is just one of four particle colliders in the LHC (the other three are: ALICE, CMS, and LHCb). ATLAS itself is 46 meters (151 feet) long and has a diameter of 25 meters (82 feet). It is MASSIVE; its scale and power is difficult to comprehend.

Entrance to ATLAS- Go through the blue doors, down an elevator, and into deep earth.

Awesome blue VIP CERN safety helmets :)

The Korbel crew, all geared up for safety!

Although this looks like a sad person (reading a book, maybe?), it's a sign indicating excessive oxygen. If the red light above it starts flashing, hold your breath!!

Our glimpse of ATLAS, and this is only the very front portion of the machine!

ATLAS is made up of an extremely complicated series of cables (over 3,000km!), 8 ginormous superconducting magnets, thousands of detectors, calorimeters, and spectrometers, among many other parts. When particle collisions happen in the LHC (at 99.99% of the speed of light), ATLAS can detect the tracks of sub-atomic particles that are only visible for significantly less than a billionth of a second. From these tracks and 'leftovers', scientists can discover new particles (like the Higgs boson, proved in 2012), figure out their mass, and can recreate and learn more about what the universe likely looked and acted like in the first milliseconds after the Big Bang almost 14 billion years ago. In a word, the work done at ATLAS and with the LHC is miraculous. Although I will never understand the intricacies of the science and math of it beyond the general principles and theories, I have infinite respect for what goes on at CERN and for the scientists who work there.

Looking down at one end of the machine (L) and looking up (R).

Appreciating the scientific and technological beauty.

This is only about 1/5 of the whole machine!!

Mario, our particle physicist, teaching us about how ATLAS works.

Stoked to be there :)

Welcome to ATLAS.

Our three-hour tour went by in a flash and almost felt like a dream. It was like a science fiction movie, except it was real, and oh-so-much cooler. I want to dedicate my visit to CERN to my amazing older sister, Lydia. Physics major, my "Bill Nye the Science Guy" buddy since elementary school, and one of the most intelligent people I have the privilege of knowing. I know she would have loved to see this, but she was definitely with me in spirit! Kings to you, Bill!! :)

Three cheers for CERN!!!

After we returned from CERN, the eight of us went our separate ways for a while for lunch and afternoon naps, and then four of us met back up in the evening to check out the Fête de Genève activities along the waterfront and partake in the celebrations for Swiss National Day. It was a beautiful, warm evening; perfect weather for a perfect day of science and celebrations!

Beautiful Lake Geneva and the Jet d'Eau.

Bubbles!

The sunset was beautiful.

These were totally random and lit up at night after the sun went down. The Swiss are a bit strange.

Swiss beer for Swiss National Day :)

The fireworks by the lake were insane! People were lighting things off right and left and from all parts of town and from every side of the lake. It was almost like being back in Vancouver, WA for the Fourth of July ("It's a war zone!")! I was amazed that the usually uptight Swiss would allow such raucous behavior. ;)