In this entry, I will continue by describing Day 3 at CERN.
DAY 3:
I arrived at the CERN Reception area at 8:50 am and waited to meet Katie. When she came, she was obviously in a hurry, so I jumped up and sped along behind her. All I knew at that point was that I was going to meet John Ellis, a CERN theoretical physicist. Oh yeah, and I knew that he was one of the masterminds of modern particle Physics. He is, after all, mentioned in some shape or form in most of the articles that I had read about CERN and the LHC before I arrived on the actual scene. So I did know that the fact that I was going to meet John Ellis within the next few minutes was a pretty big deal.
But John Ellis is so much more than a pretty big deal. It took one look at him and his office to know that he was the real deal, a modern version of Einstein. White hair, not grey but literally white hair covers his head and face, so much so that the only part of his face that can be easily seen are his eyes. Yet, somehow because of all this whiteness covering his face, his eyes seem to stand out more brilliantly. They are bright, bright blue and totally wise-looking. I must say that I am never a person to notice anything about a person's eyes, but with John Ellis, you cannot avoid staring at them. For all you Lord of the Rings lovers, I bet if he wanted to he could pull off the Gandalf look...you know, when Gandalf becomes Gandalf the White instead of Gandalf the Grey. He is just that powerful looking. You can literally see the genius there in the way that he looks.
Yet, he was also tentative and extremely kind to me. He was not willing to offer up any information, but instead waited for me to ask the questions. If I happened to ask the right question to uncover some important detail of his life, he was willing to tell me about it. Essentially, then, it was up to me to figure out the right questions to ask...it was like figuring out the pieces to a puzzle.
And that room!!! Oh my, I must say I have never seen anything quite like that room that he works in! White towers of paper covered the desk and the floor. The towers were so high in fact that when Mr. Ellis sat behind his desk and I sat on the other side, I could barely see the top half of his head. In addition, the two chalkboards were filled with math. The math, of course, was not math that one would generally see on a chalkboard at school, it was math the like of which I had never laid eyes on before. It was extremely complicated math, probably cutting edge math. Also, the entire room smelled full of papers, chalk and aged wood. All I can say is that the entire room really had that feel of housing someone too important for it to be tidy. I loved that feel...it was purely awesome to be in its presence and in John Ellis' presence.
As I said before, with John Ellis, one really has to ask the right questions to get information. The first thing he did upon walking into the room was sit down and wait expectantly for me to begin questioning him. I have since realized that this meeting with John Ellis really was an interview...my first legit interview that I have conducted ever. But despite my rookie status, I believe that I found much interesting information about Mr. Ellis. Below is some of what he said.
John Ellis has been working at CERN for 35 years. He was involved with the LEP experiment before the LHC was being built. Surprisingly, LEP was another less powerful particle accelerator that used the same tunnel that the LHC uses now. The scientists took LEP apart so that they could build the LHC. But what does Mr. Ellis do exactly? He told me that as a theoretical physicists he writes papers about his new ideas, develops equations and comes up with math specifying what the LHC should be looking for. For example, one of the chalkboards filled with math was his work towards developing an equation for a relationship between matter and antimatter. It looked pretty complicated I must say. He is also extremely fascinated with discovering why matter dominates antimatter and explaining dark matter. In addition to all this, he specifically wanted to make the point that the public's fear of the LHC's potential ability to create mini-black holes is completely overblown. The mini-black holes, if created would be more like "grey holes"...they would disintegrate immediately into other particles. He said that he is often frustrated when people say that they fear the LHC experiment, but then don't bother to research further into the issue.
Then I asked how he decided to be a Physicist. After giving me a look that implied that he hadn't really thought of that period in his life for quite some time, he answered the most astonishing answer. Apparently, when he was 12 years old he read books at the local library all the time. However, unlike a typical 12 year old reader, he was bored with the fictional books, and decided to try nonfiction for a while. Soon, he was reading the most famous books about Physics and space. Now, while I read a ton from an early age, I don't think that I could have gotten through a cutting edge Physics book at age 12. Just goes to show you that some people really are born for this type of thing. Then, of course, as time passed Mr. Ellis took math, chemistry and biology, but as many of the other Physicists said as well, Physics just seemed to be the most fundamental science. It seems that Mr. Ellis was driven by a desire to get to the bottom of all the deepest mysteries of the Universe.
Nevertheless, along the way John Ellis has certainly made a name for himself. During this conversation with him, I stumbled upon the fact that he had come up with the solution for finding the gluon (the particle responsible for holding quarks in a proton together). This deed is no small achievement! Scientists had been trying to prove the gluons existence for a long period of time before and had virtually given up when John Ellis predicted the correct way for discovering the particle. As he described it, in fact, he was merely walking around the cafeteria getting ready for lunch when suddenly, the idea for finding the gluon hit him! But John Ellis has been involved with so much more earth-shattering Physics that even I, who barely knows the significance of these discoveries, was astounded. For example, not only did John Ellis predict how to discover the gluon, but he also named the "squark," the supersymmetric partner of the quark that the LHC might discover. He even told me that he came up with the idea for smashing electrons and positrons together at extremely high speeds, a concept that might prove to be the fundamental idea of the next machine CERN could develop after years of working on the LHC.
As you can probably tell by the amount I have written about him, I left that hour long meeting with John Ellis completely astounded. I knew at that point that he is definitely "the man" when it comes to particle Physics. I have since found that everyone else believes that last statement as well. For the rest of the week, whenever I told one of the scientists that I had met John Ellis, his/her eyes would brim with excitement. Most of the scientists at CERN have never met him but would give an arm and a leg to do so. I am so lucky! Meeting John Ellis was definitely a memorable moment of my week.
Anyway, back to the rest of Day 3. After attending the Introduction to Cosmology Lecture Part 2, I visited the CERN Control Centre with Katie and met with some computer scientists who work there. The centre really does look as if it was out of a fiction movie. Extremely high tech computers were everywhere with huge boards filled with buttons right next to them. Yes, folks, this room was where the actual experimentation was being controlled. It was almost overwhelming to see such gobs of technology!
Next stop was lunch. Every day after the first day, Katie had me sit with her, her husband and all of her Physics friends at lunch. It was really generous of her, and also allowed to me to catch a glimpse of the social life at CERN. I loved how Katie had a little group of friends that sit together. I also loved the European influence on the lunchtime at CERN...lunch lasted 2 hours every day!!! That was enough to get lunch, walk around and then sit down and have a cafe au lait!
Finally, at 2:00 pm I met with Jim Kerby, an engineer from Fermilab who then toured me around the SM18 Magnet Facility (see pictures below). Now, if you are thinking magnet as in a magnet with a north and south pole that you can hold in your hand, think again. These magnets were MASSIVE and they have wires running through them which create a large magnetic field. But wait, stop, you say, since when do large magnets have to do with any of this? The answer is that these magnets are responsible for directing the protons along the 17 mile tunnel. In other words, since the protons have charge, they bend in a magnetic field. Thus, big magnets are perfect for the job of guiding protons around a tunnel.
So, who is Jim Kerby and what exactly is the SM18 Magnet Facility? Jim Kerby is one of the main engineers who is in charge of building these hugely powerful magnets. Before the magnets are allowed to be used underground, they are tested at the SM18 Magnet Facility to make sure that they are working properly. The coolest part of all this literally? The magnets have to be supercooled down to 4 degrees Kelvin with liquid helium during testing. If you didn't know, 4 degrees Kelvin is equivalent to -269 degrees Celcius. When the actual experiment begins, the magnets will be cooled to an even lower temperature of 2 degrees Kelvin (-271 degrees Celcius).
Finally, like every other day, I arrived back at the CERN Reception Centre to meet my mom. And, there ends Day 3 of my journey to Switzerland.
Keep checking for more descriptions of my trip!!
-Carolyn
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