These pictures were taken when I went down into the Cavern of the CMS detector located 90 meters underground at the LHC at CERN. I visited the CMS detector on my first day at CERN. Read on to find out more about my experience at the CMS detector.
So now that you all know something about the LHC and CERN, in this entry, I will describe more of my experiences here. Right now, for example, I will specifically describe my first day at CERN. I also have finally gotten some pictures of which I will put on display. But before I start, I must mention one fact that I forgot to mention before that is unbelievably important. While the machine, the LHC, accelerates the beams of protons in such a manner that they smash together, there are four separate detectors that will take data from different locations on the LHC to perform different experiments. These are known as CMS, ATLAS, ALICE and LHCb. Unbelievably, there are scientists who deal specifically with each experiment....and only that experiment. Thus, the scientists of CMS do not really associate with the scientists of ALICE, even though they are all technically working on the same project.
First of all, you would never expect such a dramatically complicated modern experiment to be located where the LHC is located. Every morning when I drive past the village of Meyrin, Switzerland, the town right next to the Reception Centre at CERN, I am blown away by its country feel. There is one street in the town that is barely large enough to fit one car, let alone two, and only the bare necessities for stores. There is one pharmacie, one grocery store and one post office. There are also maybe two small restaurants. Besides that, the village is basically a collection of houses.
Beyond the village, and as one nears CERN, lies fields upon fields of, what else, but sunflowers. Apparently, this area around Geneva is a major place for sunflower production and you have never seen anything like the rows upon rows of the thick green stems and vibrant yellow heads of these flowers that are almost as tall as me (I am 5'6'' to give you an idea). Even more astonishing though is the view at a distance. Past these fields of sunflowers lies the omnipresent French Alps. It is actually totally bizarre because the countryside is pretty much flat for miles and then suddenly, from out of nowhere, it seems that these gigantic mountains appear just so that you cannot forget them. And in the middle, somewhere between the fields of sunflowers but not quite as far as the Alps, lies a gigantic circular wooden building that looks as if it could take off and travel through outer space. When you see this building, you know that you are nearing CERN.
CERN, however, does not use that futuristic building for anything other than for receptions and displays. The real reception area...and, in fact, the entire site...is as unfancy as a laboratory can get. Clearly, the scientists at CERN are more interested in funding the machine than in their own office spaces....not to say that the buildings are terrible....they are actually quite comfortable, but they are boring. The walls have been whitewashed, and there are barely any pictures anywhere. There are diagrams of the LHC occasionally, but even those mostly exist in the buildings that hold the experiments, not those which hold the office spaces. However, walking down those hallways, one certainly gets the feeling that he/she is in the presence of something huge...I personally felt as if I were walking down the halls of NASA (which I have never done before, but NASA as I have imagined it of course). And then, all of a sudden, the dull hallways open up into the lobby of the central office building and there is the cafeteria....as a cafeteria is in a typical high school or small college. Finally, beyond the cafeteria is the "campus," where other office buildings are and of course, the LHC with its various buildings along its 17 mile circumference itself. Here, I felt as if I had left NASA for a college campus.
I have now had three jam-packed days at CERN, but I have yet to describe anyone that I have met or anything that I have seen. So now that I have given you an idea of the atmosphere of CERN, I shall attempt to somewhat thoroughly cover the last three days that I have been here.
DAY 1:
I arrived at CERN for the first day at 1:00 pm. I had absolutely no idea what to expect and only a rudimentary knowledge of the LHC and its purpose. To my surprise, the woman in charge of coordinating the United States press, Katie Yurkewicz, was waiting for me at the reception area. Immediately, I realized the massive amount of information that I was going to be able to get out of this experience when she handed me a packet generally used to inform big shot journalists from the New York Times or the Washington Post about the LHC. Since that moment, in fact, I have been treated as a serious science journalist instead of a high school teenager. For three days I have had constant meetings, interviews and tours with some of the most experienced scientists, with graduate students studying for PhD's and with the engineers in charge of designing and building the accelerator. I know more than I ever thought I would understand about particle Physics, and all I had to do to get such treatment was to e-mail my interest to Katie last March. Unbelievably nice, huh?.... but I am getting ahead of myself.
Katie is, I think, one of the nicest people that I have ever met. Straight blond hair and always dressed classy but modestly, she manages my time here and brings me about to meet the people I need to meet. Although you would never guess it because she deals primarily with public relations, Katie has a PhD in Physics from Michigan State herself.....impressive and totally intimidating! Yet, she still fits into the role of my guardian on the CERN campus very nicely, and I have appreciated her presence greatly throughout this process. She has even allowed me to sit with her, her husband and her friends at lunch, and has updated me as to the trials that one must overcome to get a PhD in Physics!
After 20 minutes of speaking with Katie about the upcoming week, Steve Nahn, a highly distinguished Physicist and Professor from MIT came to pick me up to bring me on a tour of CMS, which is one of the four huge detectors that will be used to gather data and perform experiments using the LHC. Steve is probably exactly what you would expect for a Physicist in some regards, and totally not in others. He is younger than I would have thought him to be, with blond hair and glasses. He is jumpy, and totally excited about being at CERN, where he spent all the year before last on sabbatical and where he has returned to spend the summer. After whisking me away from Katie, the two of us walked at a brisk pace down the hallway, talking about the LHC all the time. But the amusing part of this scenario that I remember most is the way that Steve was the "cool man" on the CERN campus. Since he has been working there on and off for 15 years, he knew almost every person that we passed by on campus. If CERN was a college, the atmosphere which I think it resembles most, Steve would be the popular kid who is not too cool to be friends with every single person that he has ever met. I mean, seriously, he would stop in the middle of a conversation, grab the person walking in the other direction on the path and say quite loudly, "Heya Bill (or some other name), howya doin?! You know, we really need to go play that game of ping-pong sometime! Okay? Awsome, you rock man!" And the other person would always smile because he/she was always so glad to be spoken too in that light.
But not only that, Steve has been probably the most enthusiastic Physicist and maybe person that I have met at CERN, or maybe even in life in general. He loves his job. He was so excited to show me his office, describe to me the concepts of the LHC and to show me around CMS, which is the part of the experiment where he is an expert. Finally, he asked me to put on a hard hat and some sneakers to protect my feet, and the next thing I knew I was traveling 90 meters underground in an elevator to catch a glimpse of the CMS detector itself. And little did I know what I was about to experience!
The thing is huge.....literally breathtaking. I was so not expecting the massive wheel filled with wires going this way and that and the steel stairs and platforms everywhere for the French and Swiss builders of the machine to walk on. Sure, I knew that the CMS is a huge machine, and I had seen a diagram of it so I knew in a way what it would look like....but there really is nothing like standing in front of the darn thing. Above, in fact, are two pictures of the CMS detector, although they hardly do the machine's beauty and massiveness justice.
But what does the CMS detector do exactly? It helps to look for a Higgs particle of course! As well as a few other particles and strange phenomenon, some of which nobody has ever dreamt of...
Here is a somewhat watered down version of how the CMS detector works:
The beams protons in the LHC will be accelerated around and around until they have achieved a gigantic intensity, kinetic energy and a speed that is about 99.9% the speed of light. Then, as the protons continue to move around the LHC, there will be various checkpoints along the tunnel where the two beams of protons moving in opposite directions will collide. Of course, of the billions of protons that will be shot into the collision area during each "event" as the scientists call it, only about 20 collisions between protons will actually happen. When such a collision occurs, however, the particles that fly off from the collision will fly into the detector. Each layer of the circular detector is designed to notice and stop different particles, or measure the energies of some particles. As particles are stopped in different places, computers record where each particle stopped so that each collision has basically a "fingerprint." Then, this data goes directly to large computer systems right next to the CMS machine. The computer system is responsible for sorting through the millions of pieces of data that come every second for the 100 or so interesting "fingerprints" (the term fingerprint isn't a scientific term, just something I made up as a way of describing what happens). These computers have been designed to search for certain patterns in the data, and while there is a possibility that the computer's decision to throw some piece of data away might mean that the scientists might lose something interesting, they have been programmed with enough care to ensure that most interesting "events" will be recorded and will be able to be analyzed by scientists.
Well, it is yet again, 11:00 pm now, and I must get to bed. I am sure to have another interesting day tomorrow. And there is still so much to describe. But for now, enjoy the pictures. When I return, I will describe my second day at CERN.
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