So, we have finally reached the point where I am about to describe my last day at CERN. Now, not to get all corny or anything, but in all seriousness, the week was long and hard, and writing this blog has been long and hard, but it has been quite the experience and I shall always remember it. Before that e-mail from the Lorant Fellowship committee, I never would have thought that I would visit the largest and most important Physics experiment in the world. Even on the first day at CERN, I had never heard of such things as quarks or gluons before. Yet, here I am, two weeks later able to explain these bizarre concepts to you! I have to say, after this trip, I am super excited and totally confident that I can take on AP Physics at Andover. But I'll save some of these personal thoughts for the last entry...first, I must discuss my last day at CERN.
DAY 5:
Day 5 at CERN was filled with A LOT of meetings and if sounds like I was running every which way throughout this description going from one to another, you're right, I was. I arrived at the CERN Reception Centre at 9:00 am to wait for Katie. As usual, she was headed somewhere so I just jumped into her wake and followed her back to the ATLAS experiment where I met Katherine Copic, a postdoctorate affiliated with Columbia University. A bouncy person, Katherine seemed to be having the time of her life working at CERN, and taking time away from her work to visit with me did not seem to dampen her spirits at all. Well, by this time, I was an "old hat" at conducting interviews and our conversation took off in many different directions. Here is what I found:
Katherine WAS having the time of her life working at CERN. She was not afraid to take weekends off from work (despite the fact that many Physicists seem to work through weekends) and often went on fantastic trips with her friends...after all, she is living on the boarder of Switzerland and France. Of all the Physicists, I believe she had the best story about how she became involved with Physics. Apparently, she was studying to be a Political Science Major when she took a Physics course as an undergraduate and decided to change majors! Well, let me tell you, being a person drawn to many often dramatically different interests, such a story definitely resonates with me. My two favorite courses at school are Physics and English...since when have you ever heard of those two as a combination? In addition, the fact that I will be soon entering college and will be picking a major made Katherine's story of indecision all the more relevant to me. At this point in my life, I could go in any direction academically that I please. So, while I have some sort of idea what area I will major in, I can definitely see these plans shift as Katherine's did. But judging by the way Katherine's life has played out so far, changing one 's major is okay. And, that's a comforting thought!
Then, our conversation turned to how Katherine chose to work on ATLAS and how she became affiliated with Columbia. From this part of the conversation, I learned about an entire hierarchical world of research, from Professors down to graduate students and postdocs. Apparently, after graduate school (which could take a long time), if a student still wants to become a Physicist the next step is to do a postdoctorate somewhere. Often, professors at colleges will not only teach, but will direct their own research teams as well. A research team could be a professor working at the school who is in charge of the operation, and then 5 or 6 postdoctorate students and graduate students underneath who are working on site at CERN. In Katherine's case, then, a professor at Columbia offered her a job to work on ATLAS at CERN. Other colleges offered her jobs to work on other parts of the LHC, but the Columbia job was the most "hands on" according to Katherine.
After an hour conversing with Katherine, Katie then rushed me over to meet Dan Miner of the University of Rochester which took place again in the relaxed environment of the cafeteria. There is no other way to describe Dan except that he was a one man show. He was wearing, yes, a bright hawaiian t-shirt which I think shows how much pure fun he was having at CERN. Yet, despite the craziness of the hawaiian t-shirt, he always had a serious brooding side as well. I discovered while talking to him that not only was he having a "blast" at CERN, but that he was also there to find out as much as he could about the Universe. The way he described it, I think that he had always had this drive to find out about the unknown, to solve some of the mysteries about why humans are living and what makes the world and life possible. I don't know about you, reader, but I certainly know that I have a little bit of that in me as well. Well, Dan had decided to do something about this thirst for answers, and that is what had led him to CERN. He also managed to give the best answer to a question that I received all week. I asked him if he thought that humans would ever totally understand the entire Universe. His answer was that he hoped not, because then he would be out of job!
Next, I rushed over to the lobby in front of the cafeteria. I knew my way around so well by this point that Katie didn't even need to meet me to show me where to go. I am lucky, however, that I found my next interview because I had no idea what he was going to look like.
After waiting for several minutes, though, my fears of not finding my next meeting were put to rest as a kindly looking middle-aged Physicist in shorts and a t-shirt came up to me and shook my hand. This Physicist was Jeffrey Hangst of the University of Aarhus and he happened to be the head of the ALPHA experiment, an experiment not actually associated with the LHC, but another one sponsored by CERN. I was meeting with him to get an idea of the other aspects of CERN for CERN is not exclusively about the LHC.
Jeffrey Hangst, I soon found out, was not only about to spend a considerable chunk of his time teaching me about the ALPHA experiment, but he had actually come in from his vacation as well! Nowhere else would you find someone so excited about their job that they were willing to take a break from their vacation to tell you about it. But that is what CERN is like!
I also soon found out that Mr. Hangst was no ordinary Physicist either. Like John Ellis, he was a big deal in disguise! Jeffrey Hangst could be on his way to winning a Nobel Prize with the ALPHA experiment...in fact, some say that with the ALPHA experiment, he could have done enough to have already won the Nobel Prize! Imagine my surprise when halfway through the meeting I discovered such astounding facts about the person I was speaking with. It was like discovering suddenly that you are in the presence of greatness and should have been groveling on the ground to that person instead of speaking to them in a natural manner. I had the same feeling with John Ellis as well (see below entry about him).
So, what is ALPHA and how has it made Jeffrey Hangst such an acclaimed name in Physics? The ALPHA experiment is a completely different experiment from any of those on the LHC. Let me repeat, ALPHA is not involved with the LHC in any way. It is another experiment sponsored by CERN. However, while the LHC is considered a high energy/high intensity experiment, the ALPHA experiment is considered a high precision experiment. In other words, the LHC merely smashes particles together...the ALPHA experiment attempts to control particles so that they can be studied.
Essentially, ALPHA is interested in the topic of antimatter. Just to make sure you are all with me, I will explain the concept of antimatter again. Do you remember how in a previous entry I explained that according to the proven theory of antimatter, all particles have a partner particle that is exactly the same as the original particle except for the fact that it is oppositely charged? So, for example, up and down quarks have up and down antiquarks, protons have antiprotons and electrons have positrons. When antimatter and matter collide, they annihilate. At the beginning of the Universe, matter and antimatter coexisted in equal amounts. However, for some reason, matter triumphed over antimatter back then, and so now it is only matter that naturally exists. Lucky for us, of course, because if antimatter did exist in equal amounts as matter, the two would collide, everything would annihilate and life as we know it could never exist. But, as I said before, the main question when dealing with such concepts is the following: what happened to all that antimatter? Many people think that solving such a huge question could lead us to fascinating conclusions about how our Universe came to exist, and why it acts the way it does. Before I go any further I should also mention that antimatter itself is an old idea...in fact, its been around since the 1930's. It is also a confirmed old idea, that is, we know that antimatter can be created.
What does ALPHA have to do with any of this antimatter craziness? It intends to study the problem of antimatter's disappearance right after the Big Bang. In fact, many of ALPHA's workers have already made huge strides in the antimatter area with their last project ATHENA. In 2002, ATHENA was able to make low-energy antihydrogen. Basically, in the same way that one would make normal hydrogen (with one proton and one electron), the scientist use one antiproton and one antielectron, otherwise known as a positron, to make antihydrogen. The ATHENA project was the first time that such a creation had ever been made, and that is why Jeffrey Hangst, the ATHENA Physics coordinator or in other words one of the heads of the experiment, could win a Nobel Prize already. Unfortunately, Mr. Hangst told me that he thought merely creating antihydrogen would not be enough for a Nobel Prize. He believes that he wouldn't win it until he has successfully trapped the antihydrogen in an area so that he can study the stuff.
Unfortunately, with the last experiment called ATHENA, the plans to trap the antihydrogen failed. The problem was that the scientists used magnets to direct the antiproton and the positron around, which worked fine, but when the two combined to become antihydrogen, the antihydrogen was no longer charged. Uncharged things do not feel magnetic force, so the uncharged antihydrogen was suddenly free floating. But remember, when antimatter bumps into matter, they annihilate each other, so when the free floating antihydrogen bumped into the edge of the experiment, it disappeared into other particles made of normal matter. Annoyingly, then, the only way that the scientists could tell that they had made antimatter was when they saw these other particles in their experiment that could only have been created from the annihilation of antihydrogen. But by then, it was too late to trap the antihydrogen. ALPHA plans on solving this problem. If so, Jeffrey Hangst, the spokesperson and the head of the experiment, might win the Nobel Prize.
Not only did I get to meet Mr. Hangst and speak with him about his experiment, but Mr. Hangst also gave me a private tour of the experiment (see pictures below). No, I didn't need to go 100 meters underground to see this experiment, and no, I didn't need a hard hat, but it was certainly an amazing sight. The large room with concrete floors was filled with bizarre looking equipment, "DANGER" signs and a spacey looking glass control tower. As I spoke with Mr. Hangst, huge metal containers filled with liquid helium kept passing what felt like directly over my head...the liquid helium was being moved around with a large yellow crane attached to the top of the ceiling. Its purpose was to keep the magnets at extremely low temperatures.
During this trip to ALPHA, I also found that if the movie Angels and Demons had been shot at CERN, it would have been shot at ALPHA, not at the LHC. Apparently, Dan Brown's fictional ideas about antimatter at CERN had been inspired to some degree by the ATHENA and the ALPHA experiments. Of course, most of what Dan Brown says in his book is entirely untrue. Mr. Hangst assured me that it is virtually impossible to make large amounts of antimatter and that nobody was trying to make an antimatter bomb to blow up Rome (which is what I've been told is attempted in the book, although I admit, I have never read it).
After leaving Jeffrey Hangst, I had finally reached my last meeting of the day and at CERN. Before I went to it, I stopped to and said good bye to Katie. I have to say it was a bitter-sweet moment. I was tired from the long week and ready to take a break, but on the other hand, I was going to miss seeing Katie every day.
Then, I went to my very last meeting at CERN. I was to eat lunch with University of Michigan undergraduate student Adam Sypniewski. He was the closest one to my age that I met during the whole process.
I ended up sitting with Adam and a group of his summer student friends in the cafeteria. It was definitely different talking to them than talking to the Physicists who had been working for CERN for long periods of time--Adam and his friends really had that sense of being outsiders looking in as well, a feeling that I could totally identify with.
Although Adam was the last person I met at CERN, he definitely was a highlight of the week. Besides the fact that his hair was blond, he had that cool Harry Potter look...minus the scar and the quirkiness. In addition, even though he was an undergraduate student who at that point was at the bottom of the totem poll, Adam might have been one of the more brilliant people at CERN. I have no doubt that Adam will be the next "big thing" to happen to CERN.
After lunch, Adam took me to see the offices at LHCb, the fourth experiment of the LHC and the one on which he works. There, he began to talk about his experiences growing up. For example, I found that Adam had taught HIMSELF, yes himself, computer science. I felt literally in the presence of a computer genius. He told me that one day he just decided to fiddle around with his computer and that with enough trial and error, he had learned almost everything there was to know about computers. He even gets paid some money to figure out how to hack into various computers, and then to figure out a way to safeguard those computers from the hackers! But he has never, ever taken a computer course!
When I left Adam, I walked slowly back to the Reception Centre. I wanted to take it all in for the last time. The dank, dark hallways, the black line on the floor that lead to the cafeteria and the rooms full of scientists working hard towards the common goal of building the LHC. Then, I left the building, drove past the spacey looking building that represents CERN to me but is never actually used, the fields of wildflowers and the tiny village of Meyrin to the hotel in Geneva. My week at CERN was over.
-Carolyn
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