CERN

This afternoon, I went with my friends Julia and Cedric with the Geneva Interns Association tour of CERN.  The public tours are booked ahead 6 months, but we were lucky to get in with some GIA members from CERN.

Our first two tour guides were really great, they were both doctorate students doing research in CERN, who volunteer to give tours on weekends.  One of them said that giving tours really helped him to think about how to explain concepts in a way the public can understand, and also helped convince himself of the importance of the work, as he explains the importance to other.  The concepts of particle physics are not exactly easy to grasp.  They did a good job of explaining things as simply as possible, but it was still a bit over my head.  It is always great to hear people speak passionately about their life's work, even if you don't really understand what they are talking about.

One thing I found striking about the CERN facilities was how outdated and rundown the buildings looked.  Apparently, when budget cuts hit, all the money is spent on the machinery and technology and the buildings aren't really a priority.  I was also surprised at how many people work at the facility.  At any given time, there are 10000 "users" of CERN, researchers and students who use the facility for their research.  That doesn't even include any of the CERN staff who maintain the machinery and run the organisation.

Particle accellerator.

Unfortunately, in the third part of the tour, the ALPHA experiment, the building was really noisy, and our tour guide was really quiet, so I didn't really hear much of his explanations. The project has something to do with studying the properties of anithydrogen, but that's about all I know.

There was a lot of tin foil...

Some of the machinery had quite a lot of tin foil, and looked like it could have been a science fair project, or perhaps even a Halloween costume, but I'm sure it is all there for a reason.

Looking for some antimatter.

This evening, I went all the way to France to get my groceries (only a 15 minute bus ride), because stores there are open until 9:00pm, instead of 5:00pm.  It's crazy to think that little Kincardine has a 24 hour grocery store, but you can't get groceries on Sundays or after 7 on weeknights here.