Greetings all! Since I don't have much going on in my life that is worth reporting other than a trip to New York, going home, relaxing, eating food, working out, playing Starcraft, and writing my thesis, I will write today on other things going on at CERN that are both neat and almost as important as my work in rho particles. Possibly even more so!
I'll start with those things on the LHC (Large Hardon Collider for those of you familiar with fun typos) that I am most familiar with.
ALICE! The experiment I work for, ALICE or A Large Ion Collider Experiment, is unique from other experiments on the LHC in that it isn't looking for the Higgs Boson. For those uninformed, this is an elusive particle tied into, you guessed it, the spontaneous breaking of electroweak symmetry. Beyond that physicsy nonsense implied in that porker of a description, this has to do with explaining why certain particles have mass. ALICE does not look for this. We are a more specialized kind of detector looking at something called quark-gluon plasma which is what you get when you take two atoms (or protons) and hurl them violently into each-other at very very close to the speed of light. Basically EVERYTHING evaporates into the most basic bits of matter (quarks and gluons) and you get a very very hot soup that is similar to conditions just after the big bang (like 10^-14 seconds after. A very short time). That's what we're interested in (among other things): studying the early universe. We're most useful during the brief but exciting heavy ion run. This is when the LHC is smashing lead ions into lead ions (just the nuclei in fact, no electrons to throw off our groove).
ATLAS! A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS. More evidence that scientists can bend language to their acronym whims, this is the money experiment. If you watched angels and demons you saw the ATLAS experiment and it's control room (though there isn't a window from the control room into the experiment as the experiment has lots of radiation and is deep underground). If you've heard about something going on at CERN, it is probably ATLAS that was discussed (and possibly CMS which I'll get to in a minute). Though this experiment also does some work with this early universe plasma, the main point is searching for the aforementioned higgs boson. Recently ATLAS and CMS had a press release stating their lastest results. It continues to be "compelling" but thus far they have only managed to narrow down the mass range that the Higgs can be in. (The main way you "see" a particle is calculate the E=mc^2 mass which doesn't change no matter how fast the particle is going). It is designed to measure a very broad range of particle properties (higher energy that ALICE is capable of) to be sure to find the Higgs (as well as other things).
CMS! The Compact Muon Solenoid, this is like ATLAS in that it is a general purpose detector (it can look at a lot of things) that also look for the Higgs boson at high energies. It also has a good PR group and gets into the news more often than ALICE. Pretty much everything said about ATLAS applies here.
LHCb: Large Hadron Collider beauty, this is a specialized experiment that specifically studies particles that contain a b quark. The b is either for bottom (if you don't care about hurting the quark's feelings) or beauty (if you do) and corresponds, shockingly, to the top quark! This is one of the six known kinds of quarks. What they do is complex and less exciting to read about than what I do and what ATLAS and CMS do, so you can wiki it if you like!
Other stuff that goes on at CERN! Yes there is more to CERN than the Hardons. One of the cooler things happening is research in antimatter, that substance that if you hug it, you will explode! Among things that go on here, a space based detector called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer was launched last may and mounted on the international space station. This one looks at cosmic rays (particles that comes from spaaaace!). Another experiment, ALPHA, which I don't care to look up what it stands for, in June trapped anti-hydrogen for a reasonably long period of time, thus showing it is reasonably stable. This is like regular hydrogen expect with a positron and an anti-proton (similar to an electron and proton except that they have opposite charge and annihilate when they collide).
Other items are the CLOUD experiment which studies how clouds form, ISOLDE which study how heavy nuclii break up (what goes on when particles collide rather than what is produced), and OPERA which you may have heard of, if not by name. OPERA was the one that found neutrinos that seemed to be traveling faster than light. They were able to do the experiment again and got the same faster than light result. This is very VERY strange, especially because this would likely break all of physics if it turned out that things can move faster than light, so I'm excited that this might happen. More likely there's some hitherto unknown glitch in the experiment, but one can hope!
So, hope that wasn't too terribly dull and was reasonably understandable. I'm having a blast at home and am looking forward to seeing family in Boise over Christmas.
Caio!
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
L'Escalade and other soup festivals
I lied. Its only about one soup festival.
This weekend was a good one! In celebration of the start of my winter vacation, Geneva's weather system which alternates between freezing and clear and raining heavily decided to avoid the raining heavily aspect for two fourays into Geneva proper for myself and a roud round of rambunctious royalits. Well, and one other American. We aren't royalists.
It all began with Polly (of ALICE Matters interview fame) volunteering me to cook some fajitas for a group of her friends, which I was eminently in favor of since I both love cooking and love meeting people, especially people as amusing as these turned out to be.
Our dramatis personae reads as follows:
Polly Bennet: Royalist - bringer together of this little group and supplier of a flat where we could cook said fajitas. She is the only person who can manage to keep a fire going in her thrice accursed wood stove. I'm not bitter.
Morag Hickman: Quite possibly has one of the coolest obsessions I've ever come across. She... learns things. All sorts of things, most of which she has taught herself. She is talented at picking up discout at at . Anything from silver smithing to making stuffed animals to learning HTML. Rather artsy and about as weird as I am.
Laurel Coffey: The American respresentative to the group and a minority until I joined up. She works at ATLAS which is probably the place you envision me working at except I'm working at ALICE. ATLAS is the one that gets all the press. Laurel is a PhD student and is unamused by the lack of Mexican food on this continent, so she was perhaps the most enthusiastic of the bunch on the idea of fajitas.
Monique Tsang: half American, half English, half Chinese, she completes the balance of this little group by adding equal parts US and England. The way she gets away with this is she lived several years in the US and has lived the past several years in the UK and is currently living in Geneva all the while, if you can believe it, having been born in China. Quite a talent, that. She's quite entertaining, outgoing, and throws out phrases like "let's get some cheese and crumpets, yo!" thus mixing 90's american culture with various britishisms.
The hall is rented, the orchestra engaged, it's now time to see if we can dance (props if you get the reference). The start of our adventure begins with me buying more chicken than I possibly thought we could eat and making a delightful marinade out of lime juice, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, onion, garlic, tequila, and red wine all sort of thrown in as I felt like it and sturred before dousing the chicken and letting it sit over night. As it happened this was delicious (once cooked).
The next day began with Polly and Morag picking me up to head into Geneva for the day. Fortunately, things are open on Saturday and everyone and their mother was around doing Christmas shopping, and we were no different. We visited all sorts of stores and places that I don't want to tell you about because I bought presents at some of them. So this part of the story is shorter than the rest. We met up with Monique at the train station in Geneva later and headed back for Fajitas!
We picked up the chicken at my place as well as wine (no wine does not go with fajitas beer does, but this is France dammit!) and headed off to Polly's flat for a fun evening of cooking and, most importantly, eating. Larel met up with us there and we all set to, with everyone helping. I made some guacamole which really wasn't very good, but as those of you who have tasted my guac when I have the right ingredients can attest do, this was hardly my fault. I tried mixing in lime juice and coriander which while not too bad, did not do enough to cover the horrible quality of the avocados (one of which was almost falling apart, the other of which was barely starting to be ripe). We had a third avocado which was basically made of green plastic that I couldn't do much with. Morag made some coriander and lime sandwiches which were actually quite good (if you like coriander and lime).
Laurel brought some delicious pico de gallo that she made herself as well as nacho materials that we had as an appetiser. The cheddar cheese over here is rather sharper than one finds in Mexican restaurants in the US, but it was still good. I then started with the chicken, ending with the assistance of Morag who did something with the chicken that doubtless those of you who cook often would say "duh" to. But as most of my cooking has been my own experimenting, it hadn't occurred to me. She got the pan quite hot until all the remaining liquid has boiled off and the onions started to carmelize, then put in about half the chicken (already mostly cooked) and kept it on high until it had started to brown delightfully and was no longer somewhat soggy (even if it tasted good). As it happened this was a perfect touch and I greatly approved.
We then laid out grated cheese, sour cream (made from plane yogur and, I'm not sure, alchemy or something. I wasn't around for its making), guacamole, salsa that isn't but still tasted ok, the chicken, and some amazing spiced rice that Polly cooked and ate every last scrap. It satisfied both Laurel and my craving for Mexican quite well (though I would have preferred a good guacamole) and I think it was a huge success with everyone. We all sat around chatting and either drinking tea (the English do this well), or wine (the French do this well) while Polly prepared dessert.
Dessert was a pear cake made from scratch with big ol' huge honking delicious juicy chunks of pear throughout. It was amazing and wrapped up the night perfectly. I started to light a fire before polly physically picked me up and threw me across the room because "I wasn't doing it right" and started it herself. The fire caught for a while, but started dying because the ratio of giant log to kindling was low (also there isn't much room for building a proper tepee and none for building a log cabin in the stove). Despite my attempts to save it (polly was baking) and all I really did was introduce smoke to the room which smelled nice but also was probably not good for us or the flat. So I sulked for a while until cake cheered me up.
We talked and enjoyed ourselves for a few hours before Laurel kindly drove us all home.
The next day the weather was again nice and we headed into geneva for L'Escalade. This is a celebration of a time when the swiss drove off the invading French in 1609? Possibly 1602. I dont really care to look it up. Anyway, the fort was under seige and the French were beaten off by some famous woman whose name I cant remember who threw boiling hot soup out the window at them. I assume the Swiss army was involved somehow as well, but that is less important. Celebrations involved small groups of pikemen, drummers, and piccolo...ists marching around the old town while street vendors sell mulled wine (dear Lord I love mulled wine), hot vegetable soup, and raclet. It was quite fun, even if muskets going off occasionally do cause one to jump a bit. Sadly Monique wasn't able to make it until later when we all were getting tired, so she was unable to join us.
We wandered around for a while enjoying the noise and the old town (and the mulled wine in my case) before trying to find some friends of Laurel who "were by the cannon in the old town with a red umbrella." We kept following the sound of explosions hoping it would turn out to be a cannon (it was supposed to fire every 20 minutes) but it was always muskets. We eventually wandered into the part of the old town that Oz and I had been to previously, and then into the park on the edge of the old town where we ate lunch whilest in Geneva. Oz will remember defeting me on a giant chess board? We went past that. All quite nostalgic.
We wandered back up the hill towards the muskets and came back to a square we had been through before to find a tall British guy with a red umbrella! As it turns out the cannons, well hidden, we had been past at least twice and failed to notice. Oh well! We all went to stand in line to go through a secret passage way that the open only once a year for people to go through, so that was kinda neat (if very narrow). We then separated again and we wandered off to find food. Not much was open, but I did find a McDonalds. Before you shout bloody murder at me for eating there when french food exists, it was open and it was cheap, and I tend to try various McDonalds around the world. None quite get it right (though this one was better than most).
We headed back shortly after eating having declared it a successful day. I had wanted to get a traditional chocolate thing for Katarina (landlady's daughter), but I was unable to find one except in some shops that were closed... I had thought they would be at street vendors along with the other traditional items of mulled wine and soup. Oh well. The traditional chocolate thing is a chocolate cauldron with marzipan vegetables that is for kids who dont like vegetable soup (so, you know, for kids).
Thus ended our excapade, and a fun one it was. I returned home to pack as I am going back to the US today (as I write this I'm 20 minutes from catching a shuttle to the airport). I'll be in New York for a week or so at STAR again before going home for Christmas! I can't wait. The one damper in all this is my body decided now was the perfect time to catch a cold. I haven't had a cold for over a year and it decides to get sick just before an international flight when I have a FINAL EXAM the following morning. Ugh. James is not amused. Anyways, I'll survive. Hope to see many of you soon! A week or so. I dont know if I'll be updating or not over Christmas, but I will return to Geneva on the 17th of January and shall at least continue then.
Later all!
caio!
-James
This weekend was a good one! In celebration of the start of my winter vacation, Geneva's weather system which alternates between freezing and clear and raining heavily decided to avoid the raining heavily aspect for two fourays into Geneva proper for myself and a roud round of rambunctious royalits. Well, and one other American. We aren't royalists.
It all began with Polly (of ALICE Matters interview fame) volunteering me to cook some fajitas for a group of her friends, which I was eminently in favor of since I both love cooking and love meeting people, especially people as amusing as these turned out to be.
Our dramatis personae reads as follows:
Polly Bennet: Royalist - bringer together of this little group and supplier of a flat where we could cook said fajitas. She is the only person who can manage to keep a fire going in her thrice accursed wood stove. I'm not bitter.
Morag Hickman: Quite possibly has one of the coolest obsessions I've ever come across. She... learns things. All sorts of things, most of which she has taught herself. She is talented at picking up discout
Laurel Coffey: The American respresentative to the group and a minority until I joined up. She works at ATLAS which is probably the place you envision me working at except I'm working at ALICE. ATLAS is the one that gets all the press. Laurel is a PhD student and is unamused by the lack of Mexican food on this continent, so she was perhaps the most enthusiastic of the bunch on the idea of fajitas.
Monique Tsang: half American, half English, half Chinese, she completes the balance of this little group by adding equal parts US and England. The way she gets away with this is she lived several years in the US and has lived the past several years in the UK and is currently living in Geneva all the while, if you can believe it, having been born in China. Quite a talent, that. She's quite entertaining, outgoing, and throws out phrases like "let's get some cheese and crumpets, yo!" thus mixing 90's american culture with various britishisms.
The hall is rented, the orchestra engaged, it's now time to see if we can dance (props if you get the reference). The start of our adventure begins with me buying more chicken than I possibly thought we could eat and making a delightful marinade out of lime juice, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, onion, garlic, tequila, and red wine all sort of thrown in as I felt like it and sturred before dousing the chicken and letting it sit over night. As it happened this was delicious (once cooked).
The next day began with Polly and Morag picking me up to head into Geneva for the day. Fortunately, things are open on Saturday and everyone and their mother was around doing Christmas shopping, and we were no different. We visited all sorts of stores and places that I don't want to tell you about because I bought presents at some of them. So this part of the story is shorter than the rest. We met up with Monique at the train station in Geneva later and headed back for Fajitas!
We picked up the chicken at my place as well as wine (no wine does not go with fajitas beer does, but this is France dammit!) and headed off to Polly's flat for a fun evening of cooking and, most importantly, eating. Larel met up with us there and we all set to, with everyone helping. I made some guacamole which really wasn't very good, but as those of you who have tasted my guac when I have the right ingredients can attest do, this was hardly my fault. I tried mixing in lime juice and coriander which while not too bad, did not do enough to cover the horrible quality of the avocados (one of which was almost falling apart, the other of which was barely starting to be ripe). We had a third avocado which was basically made of green plastic that I couldn't do much with. Morag made some coriander and lime sandwiches which were actually quite good (if you like coriander and lime).
Laurel brought some delicious pico de gallo that she made herself as well as nacho materials that we had as an appetiser. The cheddar cheese over here is rather sharper than one finds in Mexican restaurants in the US, but it was still good. I then started with the chicken, ending with the assistance of Morag who did something with the chicken that doubtless those of you who cook often would say "duh" to. But as most of my cooking has been my own experimenting, it hadn't occurred to me. She got the pan quite hot until all the remaining liquid has boiled off and the onions started to carmelize, then put in about half the chicken (already mostly cooked) and kept it on high until it had started to brown delightfully and was no longer somewhat soggy (even if it tasted good). As it happened this was a perfect touch and I greatly approved.
We then laid out grated cheese, sour cream (made from plane yogur and, I'm not sure, alchemy or something. I wasn't around for its making), guacamole, salsa that isn't but still tasted ok, the chicken, and some amazing spiced rice that Polly cooked and ate every last scrap. It satisfied both Laurel and my craving for Mexican quite well (though I would have preferred a good guacamole) and I think it was a huge success with everyone. We all sat around chatting and either drinking tea (the English do this well), or wine (the French do this well) while Polly prepared dessert.
Dessert was a pear cake made from scratch with big ol' huge honking delicious juicy chunks of pear throughout. It was amazing and wrapped up the night perfectly. I started to light a fire before polly physically picked me up and threw me across the room because "I wasn't doing it right" and started it herself. The fire caught for a while, but started dying because the ratio of giant log to kindling was low (also there isn't much room for building a proper tepee and none for building a log cabin in the stove). Despite my attempts to save it (polly was baking) and all I really did was introduce smoke to the room which smelled nice but also was probably not good for us or the flat. So I sulked for a while until cake cheered me up.
We talked and enjoyed ourselves for a few hours before Laurel kindly drove us all home.
The next day the weather was again nice and we headed into geneva for L'Escalade. This is a celebration of a time when the swiss drove off the invading French in 1609? Possibly 1602. I dont really care to look it up. Anyway, the fort was under seige and the French were beaten off by some famous woman whose name I cant remember who threw boiling hot soup out the window at them. I assume the Swiss army was involved somehow as well, but that is less important. Celebrations involved small groups of pikemen, drummers, and piccolo...ists marching around the old town while street vendors sell mulled wine (dear Lord I love mulled wine), hot vegetable soup, and raclet. It was quite fun, even if muskets going off occasionally do cause one to jump a bit. Sadly Monique wasn't able to make it until later when we all were getting tired, so she was unable to join us.
We wandered around for a while enjoying the noise and the old town (and the mulled wine in my case) before trying to find some friends of Laurel who "were by the cannon in the old town with a red umbrella." We kept following the sound of explosions hoping it would turn out to be a cannon (it was supposed to fire every 20 minutes) but it was always muskets. We eventually wandered into the part of the old town that Oz and I had been to previously, and then into the park on the edge of the old town where we ate lunch whilest in Geneva. Oz will remember defeting me on a giant chess board? We went past that. All quite nostalgic.
We wandered back up the hill towards the muskets and came back to a square we had been through before to find a tall British guy with a red umbrella! As it turns out the cannons, well hidden, we had been past at least twice and failed to notice. Oh well! We all went to stand in line to go through a secret passage way that the open only once a year for people to go through, so that was kinda neat (if very narrow). We then separated again and we wandered off to find food. Not much was open, but I did find a McDonalds. Before you shout bloody murder at me for eating there when french food exists, it was open and it was cheap, and I tend to try various McDonalds around the world. None quite get it right (though this one was better than most).
We headed back shortly after eating having declared it a successful day. I had wanted to get a traditional chocolate thing for Katarina (landlady's daughter), but I was unable to find one except in some shops that were closed... I had thought they would be at street vendors along with the other traditional items of mulled wine and soup. Oh well. The traditional chocolate thing is a chocolate cauldron with marzipan vegetables that is for kids who dont like vegetable soup (so, you know, for kids).
Thus ended our excapade, and a fun one it was. I returned home to pack as I am going back to the US today (as I write this I'm 20 minutes from catching a shuttle to the airport). I'll be in New York for a week or so at STAR again before going home for Christmas! I can't wait. The one damper in all this is my body decided now was the perfect time to catch a cold. I haven't had a cold for over a year and it decides to get sick just before an international flight when I have a FINAL EXAM the following morning. Ugh. James is not amused. Anyways, I'll survive. Hope to see many of you soon! A week or so. I dont know if I'll be updating or not over Christmas, but I will return to Geneva on the 17th of January and shall at least continue then.
Later all!
caio!
-James
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Christmas related events!
Greetings everyone! I've been more busy than usual the past week, which is my excuse for the lack of a post.
One of the cooler things I've done was several training shifts in the ALICE control room. Most of the time not much is happening in there (data is taken during 'runs' that can last 5 or 6 hours) and it is only when changing what data to take or if something happens with the LHC beam that you need to do much. It's a good time to do some work as long as you keep an eye on what is happening at your station.
My first batch of training (which I did a bit last week as well) was finishing up my DQM training. DQM is Data Quality Management, or quality assurance for those of you familiar with the term. It requires a bit more attention than the other shift I trained for. There are six screens with various interfaces open on them (six screens mounted so each screen can be rotated separately is really quite awesome and I'm thinking of getting such a setup for my desktop at home), and you have to make sure that various agents are still running (agents are programs handling everything else that is going on), you have to watch for errors popping up in the log (which you also have open) and, most importantly, there are about a hundred histograms to check periodically. These are all at a glance once you get the hang of it, but it can still take 15 minutes or so to click on each detector's specific tab and look at the histograms for that detector. You want to make sure they are updating and that they have no problems (generally they pop up an alarm if they do have a problem). There are a lot of things to keep track of here.
The other shift I was training for was actually more fun: DAQ or Data AcQuisition. This is the station that starts those data runs I mentioned and really is the post with the most action when things are happening. Since the whole purpose of this experiment is to take data, this is the central station in the place and the shift leader keeps close tabs on what is going on here (which is good because in general the shift leader is the most competent person in the room). The shift leader during my training shifts was a hilarious short italian (?) guy with white hair and a respectable mustache with a great sense of humor. The shifter training me was a Slovakian tech nerd with absolutely epic hair and beard. I had more fun here than training for DQM (except the few hours I had sitting at the station with a beautiful Italian woman). Between data runs, there is nothing to do at all but make sure errors aren't cropping up so I actually started an outline for my thesis (which hope to have finished by the time I meet with my thesis committee shortly after finals).
Beyond training, I did have some real fun with the people living with me. We put up Christmas decorations! Me being the one American in the house, and Americans (apparently) being rather more obsessed with Christmas decorating than most Europeans (though you wouldn't notice it compared with this group, whatever Yiota says about Americans), I was "in charge", that is Senior Chairperson of the Subcommittee for the Purpose of Putting Lights Trees. This definition of "in charge" means the task has been delegated to me to make it the way Yiota wanted it. It was quite a lot of fun! I even have some battle scars (well, scratches). Sadly I haven't gotten pictures of the outside at night, but the inside has a lot more stuff on it. Back yard is a tree with lights and the front has a huge garland with the same. Here are pictures of our task!
The intrepid group! Left to right: Marillys, Katarina, Moritzo. While I was bringing the last few boxes down from the attic (which is fun because the ladder descends through a trap door in the ceiling), they started sorting things. Well Marillys and Moritzo did. Kati was taking various plastic animals out of their boxes and playing with them (a regression to when she was 6 no doubt)
Our Fearless Leader, Santa hat and all. Here we have some of the decorations up! Nice garlands on the back door there and a few on various objects that were handy and needed things that sparkle draped on them.
Marillys and Katarina with further Santa hats and a tree! This is one of the trees (artificial, sadly) that I was Chief Person in Terms of Illumining Aesthetics and String-Based Photon Production Bulbs for.
Moritzo was in charge of Window Partial Coverage and Decal Positioning in the kitchen, as well as one of the important members of the Garland Committee that we all assisted in(headed by Yiota).
The finished product! Well, one angle of it. I was Plant Bowman Extraordinaire, and Marillys and Katarina handled Lighted Garland Operations for this picturesque scene as well as Petite Tree Ornamentation and Placement.
Until next time friends and family! Ciao!
One of the cooler things I've done was several training shifts in the ALICE control room. Most of the time not much is happening in there (data is taken during 'runs' that can last 5 or 6 hours) and it is only when changing what data to take or if something happens with the LHC beam that you need to do much. It's a good time to do some work as long as you keep an eye on what is happening at your station.
My first batch of training (which I did a bit last week as well) was finishing up my DQM training. DQM is Data Quality Management, or quality assurance for those of you familiar with the term. It requires a bit more attention than the other shift I trained for. There are six screens with various interfaces open on them (six screens mounted so each screen can be rotated separately is really quite awesome and I'm thinking of getting such a setup for my desktop at home), and you have to make sure that various agents are still running (agents are programs handling everything else that is going on), you have to watch for errors popping up in the log (which you also have open) and, most importantly, there are about a hundred histograms to check periodically. These are all at a glance once you get the hang of it, but it can still take 15 minutes or so to click on each detector's specific tab and look at the histograms for that detector. You want to make sure they are updating and that they have no problems (generally they pop up an alarm if they do have a problem). There are a lot of things to keep track of here.
The other shift I was training for was actually more fun: DAQ or Data AcQuisition. This is the station that starts those data runs I mentioned and really is the post with the most action when things are happening. Since the whole purpose of this experiment is to take data, this is the central station in the place and the shift leader keeps close tabs on what is going on here (which is good because in general the shift leader is the most competent person in the room). The shift leader during my training shifts was a hilarious short italian (?) guy with white hair and a respectable mustache with a great sense of humor. The shifter training me was a Slovakian tech nerd with absolutely epic hair and beard. I had more fun here than training for DQM (except the few hours I had sitting at the station with a beautiful Italian woman). Between data runs, there is nothing to do at all but make sure errors aren't cropping up so I actually started an outline for my thesis (which hope to have finished by the time I meet with my thesis committee shortly after finals).
Beyond training, I did have some real fun with the people living with me. We put up Christmas decorations! Me being the one American in the house, and Americans (apparently) being rather more obsessed with Christmas decorating than most Europeans (though you wouldn't notice it compared with this group, whatever Yiota says about Americans), I was "in charge", that is Senior Chairperson of the Subcommittee for the Purpose of Putting Lights Trees. This definition of "in charge" means the task has been delegated to me to make it the way Yiota wanted it. It was quite a lot of fun! I even have some battle scars (well, scratches). Sadly I haven't gotten pictures of the outside at night, but the inside has a lot more stuff on it. Back yard is a tree with lights and the front has a huge garland with the same. Here are pictures of our task!
The intrepid group! Left to right: Marillys, Katarina, Moritzo. While I was bringing the last few boxes down from the attic (which is fun because the ladder descends through a trap door in the ceiling), they started sorting things. Well Marillys and Moritzo did. Kati was taking various plastic animals out of their boxes and playing with them (a regression to when she was 6 no doubt)
Our Fearless Leader, Santa hat and all. Here we have some of the decorations up! Nice garlands on the back door there and a few on various objects that were handy and needed things that sparkle draped on them.
Marillys and Katarina with further Santa hats and a tree! This is one of the trees (artificial, sadly) that I was Chief Person in Terms of Illumining Aesthetics and String-Based Photon Production Bulbs for.
Moritzo was in charge of Window Partial Coverage and Decal Positioning in the kitchen, as well as one of the important members of the Garland Committee that we all assisted in(headed by Yiota).
The finished product! Well, one angle of it. I was Plant Bowman Extraordinaire, and Marillys and Katarina handled Lighted Garland Operations for this picturesque scene as well as Petite Tree Ornamentation and Placement.
Until next time friends and family! Ciao!
Monday, November 28, 2011
A cacophony of light and sound
Well, and smell.
Sorry I've been away for longer than a week. It is difficult to write these lacking internet in the house and forgetting to upload pictures to my laptop to share with you all, but never fear! We have internet again! YAAAAY!
The reason I mention smell is because I have come across another comical smell here at CERN. If you'll recall from an earlier post (possibly my first, I can't remember) I mentioned a smell hanging around the site that I could only describe as industrial lucky charms? It has since cropped up once or twice more, only last time it was closer to industrial fruit loops, if one can be specific about such things. Well, today's comical smell has been hanging around the hallway outside my office. Maybe it's haunted by a smell ghost, I don't know. More likely it has something to do with all the hammering and noise next door, but if so I don't want to know why this particular smell is being produced. This olfactory event can best be described as honey walnut shrimp with a (used) car battery.
For those who have been to Noble Court in bellevue or have had dim sum where they serve the stuff, you will recognize the smell right away. For those who have not, honey walnut shrimp is even less healthy than it sounds, and even more delicious. Basically it is shrimp fried and coated in a mix of mayonnaise and honey and is deliciously calorific before being accompanied with walnuts. I've always wanted to try it myself actually, but never have gotten around to it, and in any event the smell is delightful.
The (used) car battery is similar the smell one's engine has when it overheats.
Anyway, that isn't what I came to talk to you about. I came to talk about the draft. And by that I mean pictures! I wasn't sure what to write on today, but I have a number of pictures of various random things around CERN and the area that are amusing, delightful, technological, or delicious. Sometimes all four (sort of like a honey walnut baby kitten dressed as a clown that has been assimilated by the borg, except I think that'd be more sad than anything else). In any event, enjoy!
Those in my family ought to find this picture interesting. This is a poster in the room that I am using. The kicker is, I have seen these three Cheetahs in real life. They are three brothers that were orphaned while still young, and thus rather than going solitary as they reached adulthood, they have stayed together and learned to hunt as a team (and done very well). My family and I saw them while in Africa for the Kenya Marathon.
This is one of the main conference rooms where meetings take place at CERN. The table is cool, but what I'm really interested in is that thing in the middle. I have no clue what it is, but this is CERN so I'm pretty sure it is a holographic display used to plan the attack on the Death Star.
You know those small rides they sometimes have outside of stores for kids to get their parents to spend an extra few coins? Well this is the France edition featuring Spider Mas secret police investigation. I had no idea he was a member of the Secret Police, but there you go.
And here we have something completely different, a baby goat. It is adorable. There are a bunch of them in a field near the ALICE experiment (not the CERN main site) and at one point I stopped to take pictures and they all looked up, went "baa!" and ran over to see if I had any food. I didn't, but it was still cute as all get out.
And here we see how some things can go too far. Enough said.
And now to the pictures that I really wanted to share! This is the market at Ferney-Voltaire, which I promised to get pictures of. This was last weekend. I only got pictures of around a third or a quarter of it, but it has much the same except that there are places with clothing in lieu of food. Sorry, no Churros here, I forgot I had my phone until after we had gone past that stand.
This is Kati (Katie?), that is Katarina (Caterina?), my landlady's daughter. She thought I was acting like a huge tourist. Which I was.
And here is the famous Mont d'Ore moldy cheese! That wrinkled cloth looking thing is the skin of the cheese. More on this later
And here is Yiota herself! Landlady extraordinaire. Also, CHEESE. My word there is a lot of cheese here. I got almost the whole thing, but all the way down to the end there is cheese. Welcome to France!
This is generally how the market looks from opening to closing. As you can see it is quite popular.
For those of you who have had fried chicken over at my place and have seen my Dad bust out his paella pan, the one in this pictures is even bigger. And looked delicious (but I was out of cash at that point).
Lots and lots of produce of course, there were many stands like the ones I've showed (save that I showed the largest cheese stand I could find there).
And then we met Nanook.
Fish! Not Pike place standard, but surprisingly fresh owing to our not being on the ocean. Though I suppose we're not THAT far from it... Still, for a small town farmer's market? Not bad.
And to complement the cheese, we have the essential wine. One of many stands of course.
Here's one for those of you who don't like to see your food preprocessed. Also something I haven't seen in a market before (though since I have been pheasant hunting, this wasn't as new as could be for me).
And now, the moment you've all been waiting for: pictures of the preparation of Mont d'Or a la garlic et vin blanc. (I don't know what French for garlic is). First you scoop out the middle and fill it with lots of wine and garlic. This actually wasn't quite enough wine, so I added more.
Next, Wrap it in tinfoil as best you can (harder than you'd think) with a cone shape.
Once it is in the oven, you gotta get your bread ready. I like to make my bread look nice (not necessary, but show some artistic pride!)
And here I am with my meal (which I shared with whoever was about, there is a surprisingly large amount of cheese in one of those boxes.
Sorry I've been away for longer than a week. It is difficult to write these lacking internet in the house and forgetting to upload pictures to my laptop to share with you all, but never fear! We have internet again! YAAAAY!
The reason I mention smell is because I have come across another comical smell here at CERN. If you'll recall from an earlier post (possibly my first, I can't remember) I mentioned a smell hanging around the site that I could only describe as industrial lucky charms? It has since cropped up once or twice more, only last time it was closer to industrial fruit loops, if one can be specific about such things. Well, today's comical smell has been hanging around the hallway outside my office. Maybe it's haunted by a smell ghost, I don't know. More likely it has something to do with all the hammering and noise next door, but if so I don't want to know why this particular smell is being produced. This olfactory event can best be described as honey walnut shrimp with a (used) car battery.
For those who have been to Noble Court in bellevue or have had dim sum where they serve the stuff, you will recognize the smell right away. For those who have not, honey walnut shrimp is even less healthy than it sounds, and even more delicious. Basically it is shrimp fried and coated in a mix of mayonnaise and honey and is deliciously calorific before being accompanied with walnuts. I've always wanted to try it myself actually, but never have gotten around to it, and in any event the smell is delightful.
The (used) car battery is similar the smell one's engine has when it overheats.
Anyway, that isn't what I came to talk to you about. I came to talk about the draft. And by that I mean pictures! I wasn't sure what to write on today, but I have a number of pictures of various random things around CERN and the area that are amusing, delightful, technological, or delicious. Sometimes all four (sort of like a honey walnut baby kitten dressed as a clown that has been assimilated by the borg, except I think that'd be more sad than anything else). In any event, enjoy!
Those in my family ought to find this picture interesting. This is a poster in the room that I am using. The kicker is, I have seen these three Cheetahs in real life. They are three brothers that were orphaned while still young, and thus rather than going solitary as they reached adulthood, they have stayed together and learned to hunt as a team (and done very well). My family and I saw them while in Africa for the Kenya Marathon.
This is one of the main conference rooms where meetings take place at CERN. The table is cool, but what I'm really interested in is that thing in the middle. I have no clue what it is, but this is CERN so I'm pretty sure it is a holographic display used to plan the attack on the Death Star.
You know those small rides they sometimes have outside of stores for kids to get their parents to spend an extra few coins? Well this is the France edition featuring Spider Mas secret police investigation. I had no idea he was a member of the Secret Police, but there you go.
And here we have something completely different, a baby goat. It is adorable. There are a bunch of them in a field near the ALICE experiment (not the CERN main site) and at one point I stopped to take pictures and they all looked up, went "baa!" and ran over to see if I had any food. I didn't, but it was still cute as all get out.
And here we see how some things can go too far. Enough said.
And now to the pictures that I really wanted to share! This is the market at Ferney-Voltaire, which I promised to get pictures of. This was last weekend. I only got pictures of around a third or a quarter of it, but it has much the same except that there are places with clothing in lieu of food. Sorry, no Churros here, I forgot I had my phone until after we had gone past that stand.
This is Kati (Katie?), that is Katarina (Caterina?), my landlady's daughter. She thought I was acting like a huge tourist. Which I was.
And here is the famous Mont d'Ore moldy cheese! That wrinkled cloth looking thing is the skin of the cheese. More on this later
And here is Yiota herself! Landlady extraordinaire. Also, CHEESE. My word there is a lot of cheese here. I got almost the whole thing, but all the way down to the end there is cheese. Welcome to France!
This is generally how the market looks from opening to closing. As you can see it is quite popular.
For those of you who have had fried chicken over at my place and have seen my Dad bust out his paella pan, the one in this pictures is even bigger. And looked delicious (but I was out of cash at that point).
Lots and lots of produce of course, there were many stands like the ones I've showed (save that I showed the largest cheese stand I could find there).
And then we met Nanook.
Fish! Not Pike place standard, but surprisingly fresh owing to our not being on the ocean. Though I suppose we're not THAT far from it... Still, for a small town farmer's market? Not bad.
And to complement the cheese, we have the essential wine. One of many stands of course.
Here's one for those of you who don't like to see your food preprocessed. Also something I haven't seen in a market before (though since I have been pheasant hunting, this wasn't as new as could be for me).
And now, the moment you've all been waiting for: pictures of the preparation of Mont d'Or a la garlic et vin blanc. (I don't know what French for garlic is). First you scoop out the middle and fill it with lots of wine and garlic. This actually wasn't quite enough wine, so I added more.
Next, Wrap it in tinfoil as best you can (harder than you'd think) with a cone shape.
Once it is in the oven, you gotta get your bread ready. I like to make my bread look nice (not necessary, but show some artistic pride!)
And here I am with my meal (which I shared with whoever was about, there is a surprisingly large amount of cheese in one of those boxes.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
to market to market to buy some moldy cheese
Good day to all you back at home (and places between)! I've had a number of things going on recently, including my first time having real Fondu (delicious) and increasingly cold walks to CERN as the weather changes, but today I would like to share with you a bit about one of the more amazing markets I have ever been to. I speak with some authority as I have been in more than thirty countries on six continents (well, five really. Antarctica doesn't count as a country) and have been to many markets in many places.
While my favorite market on earth remains Pike Place Market in Seattle, the one that came unexpectedly as a close second was the sunday Farmer's market in Ferney-Voltaire, France. The town is so named because Voltaire's family chateau can still be found there. A place of thought and cognizance, somewhere he could flee to when he had annoyed the aristocracy a little more than usual. I've only been outside it but it is quite large and nice, and the town of Ferney-Voltaire is charming, about 5 or 10 miles from Saint-Genis where I live.
Yiota (my landlady), Katerina (heck if I know how its spelled, her daughter), Mateosh (again, no clue how it's spelled he's greek. Another tenant in the hosue), and I were headed there to talk to Telecom, the telephone company we can't seem to get to re-establish our telephone line and internet. Yiota did talk to them and (theoretically) we will have the line reconnected on Wednesday (which comes after almost a month of dithering on their part). Regardless, internet frustrations were not enough to prevent me from thoroughly enjoying the market. I didn't think to take pictures, so I'm afraid you'll have to do with descriptions for now.
The market is spread across several streets where every sunday farmers, fishermen, chefs, and anyone else looking to flog their wares market style gather and clog traffic and parking every Sunday until 1 pm. Much of it is standard market fare only with the French twist of having irreputibly some of the best cheeses, breads, and wines in the world. There were numerous clothing and home ware stands set up as well, but mostly it was food food food as far as the eye could see. Which, as it happens, wasn't very far because this place was PACKED.
Bjorn Nilsen (who headed home on Sunday, I'm now by myself here at CERN as far as Creighton personnel are concerned) had recommended this market with high praise, and I saw the he was not exaggerating in the slightest. Quite apart from having variety and liveliness without those running the stands being grasping or obnoxious, many stands had free food samples for you to try, there were churros being made fresh on the spot, wine tasting, and people from all nationalities. I heard a number of different languages, including english (an elderly English couple who were thoroughly English was amusing to see) in a very short time as well which, while not unusal in Europe, continues to be interesting to me.
I got some rather nice, thick crusted bread (I like French bread with a good thick crust) and some wine made in the Jura mountains that you can't get anywhere else for the whopping fee of 8 euros a bottle. Yiota recommended it (she's into wine which has been a blessing while here as I enjoy wine). Very distinct, strange flavor that is quite impossible to describe. Sort of... bouncy? That may be the closest I can come, as good a description as any. I prefer the white to the red which is unusual for me. Yiota bought some mold based cheese that I will return to in a moment and we all had a fun time wandering along.
There were vegetables, cheese (my gosh was there cheese), bread stands, wine stands, meat stands (I even got to use the term meat wagon which those who have played Warcraft 3 may enjoy), greek food, french food, italian food, chinese food, all sort of mixed things. There were event many stands of wonderful smelling fish (well, as wonderful as fish can smell). I haven't the faintest clue how all the seafood came there and appearing so fresh as we're not very close to the ocean... Maybe it was all freshwater from Lake Geneva, though I doubt it. Didn't hold a candle to Pike Place (and no fish were tossed) but it was impressive nonetheless. There was even a game stall where you could get not yet cleaned or skinned rabbits, pheasants, and other cuddly, tasty critters. This was new to everyone but me (I've been phesant hunting) and everyone found it amusing.
We bought some churros from the churro lady (a friendly, elderly Frenchwoman and her husband ran the stand) and Katerina bought some roasted chestnuts which she is a big fan of. I'm less so, but for those who love roasted chestnuts, they are easy to come by here and I assume these were very good. The market on the whole wasn't cheap, but it wasn't horribly expensive either and the selection and quality made up for it. We bought as we strolled along, returning for the wine once our Telecom errand was finished, and returned home to lunch.
Remember that mold based cheese I mentioned before that Yiota bought? This cheese was being sold at one of the several cheese stands, stalls of immense size where huge slabs of cheese are laid out on display, wafting its cheesy aroma for the world to enjoy. This particular brand was contained in round wooden boxes of varying size (ours was maybe half a foot across or a little less). The surface was wrinkled and grey with white mold sprouting prominently from it. As it happened this was the surface of the cheese and not, as I thought, some cheesecloth wrapping the stuff. The cheese is called Mont d'Or, Mountain of Gold, and is nothing more or less than the most delicious I have ever had in my life.
Yiota is a good cook, but the way she prepared the cheese was so simple even I could do it (and I in fact may). The recipe was suggested by the man selling it, and she had heard the method before, though this was her first try at it. Open the lid and scoop out some of the center of the cheese. Put some wine and garlic into the hole (the more garlic the better in my opinion, she used two sections off a clove). Take it, still in the box, and wrap the whole thing in tin foil, funneled to an opening at the top to let air out (so your foil doesn't explode) and bake it in the oven for 30 minutes at 180 degrees centigrade (around 350 fahrenheit assuming I remember the conversion formula correctly). It becomes a truly delectible melange of garlicy cheesy winey goodness swathed in wood and foil that you then take your bread and lovingly swaddle it in molten cheese for a confectionary delight.
We ate the entire box and my whole loaf of bread between three of us. I tell you, it blew the fondu we had the night before clean out of the water, and that was good fondu. One of the best meals I've ever had and quite unexpectedly too. I'm normally not a fan of moldy cheeses and I was somewhat dubious until I tried the stuff. I dont know if it'll be possible to bring some of the stuff home (cheese is difficult to import and the best cheeses aren't pasturized) but maybe I can find it in the States.
Tune in next time for more adventures!
Ciao!
While my favorite market on earth remains Pike Place Market in Seattle, the one that came unexpectedly as a close second was the sunday Farmer's market in Ferney-Voltaire, France. The town is so named because Voltaire's family chateau can still be found there. A place of thought and cognizance, somewhere he could flee to when he had annoyed the aristocracy a little more than usual. I've only been outside it but it is quite large and nice, and the town of Ferney-Voltaire is charming, about 5 or 10 miles from Saint-Genis where I live.
Yiota (my landlady), Katerina (heck if I know how its spelled, her daughter), Mateosh (again, no clue how it's spelled he's greek. Another tenant in the hosue), and I were headed there to talk to Telecom, the telephone company we can't seem to get to re-establish our telephone line and internet. Yiota did talk to them and (theoretically) we will have the line reconnected on Wednesday (which comes after almost a month of dithering on their part). Regardless, internet frustrations were not enough to prevent me from thoroughly enjoying the market. I didn't think to take pictures, so I'm afraid you'll have to do with descriptions for now.
The market is spread across several streets where every sunday farmers, fishermen, chefs, and anyone else looking to flog their wares market style gather and clog traffic and parking every Sunday until 1 pm. Much of it is standard market fare only with the French twist of having irreputibly some of the best cheeses, breads, and wines in the world. There were numerous clothing and home ware stands set up as well, but mostly it was food food food as far as the eye could see. Which, as it happens, wasn't very far because this place was PACKED.
Bjorn Nilsen (who headed home on Sunday, I'm now by myself here at CERN as far as Creighton personnel are concerned) had recommended this market with high praise, and I saw the he was not exaggerating in the slightest. Quite apart from having variety and liveliness without those running the stands being grasping or obnoxious, many stands had free food samples for you to try, there were churros being made fresh on the spot, wine tasting, and people from all nationalities. I heard a number of different languages, including english (an elderly English couple who were thoroughly English was amusing to see) in a very short time as well which, while not unusal in Europe, continues to be interesting to me.
I got some rather nice, thick crusted bread (I like French bread with a good thick crust) and some wine made in the Jura mountains that you can't get anywhere else for the whopping fee of 8 euros a bottle. Yiota recommended it (she's into wine which has been a blessing while here as I enjoy wine). Very distinct, strange flavor that is quite impossible to describe. Sort of... bouncy? That may be the closest I can come, as good a description as any. I prefer the white to the red which is unusual for me. Yiota bought some mold based cheese that I will return to in a moment and we all had a fun time wandering along.
There were vegetables, cheese (my gosh was there cheese), bread stands, wine stands, meat stands (I even got to use the term meat wagon which those who have played Warcraft 3 may enjoy), greek food, french food, italian food, chinese food, all sort of mixed things. There were event many stands of wonderful smelling fish (well, as wonderful as fish can smell). I haven't the faintest clue how all the seafood came there and appearing so fresh as we're not very close to the ocean... Maybe it was all freshwater from Lake Geneva, though I doubt it. Didn't hold a candle to Pike Place (and no fish were tossed) but it was impressive nonetheless. There was even a game stall where you could get not yet cleaned or skinned rabbits, pheasants, and other cuddly, tasty critters. This was new to everyone but me (I've been phesant hunting) and everyone found it amusing.
We bought some churros from the churro lady (a friendly, elderly Frenchwoman and her husband ran the stand) and Katerina bought some roasted chestnuts which she is a big fan of. I'm less so, but for those who love roasted chestnuts, they are easy to come by here and I assume these were very good. The market on the whole wasn't cheap, but it wasn't horribly expensive either and the selection and quality made up for it. We bought as we strolled along, returning for the wine once our Telecom errand was finished, and returned home to lunch.
Remember that mold based cheese I mentioned before that Yiota bought? This cheese was being sold at one of the several cheese stands, stalls of immense size where huge slabs of cheese are laid out on display, wafting its cheesy aroma for the world to enjoy. This particular brand was contained in round wooden boxes of varying size (ours was maybe half a foot across or a little less). The surface was wrinkled and grey with white mold sprouting prominently from it. As it happened this was the surface of the cheese and not, as I thought, some cheesecloth wrapping the stuff. The cheese is called Mont d'Or, Mountain of Gold, and is nothing more or less than the most delicious I have ever had in my life.
Yiota is a good cook, but the way she prepared the cheese was so simple even I could do it (and I in fact may). The recipe was suggested by the man selling it, and she had heard the method before, though this was her first try at it. Open the lid and scoop out some of the center of the cheese. Put some wine and garlic into the hole (the more garlic the better in my opinion, she used two sections off a clove). Take it, still in the box, and wrap the whole thing in tin foil, funneled to an opening at the top to let air out (so your foil doesn't explode) and bake it in the oven for 30 minutes at 180 degrees centigrade (around 350 fahrenheit assuming I remember the conversion formula correctly). It becomes a truly delectible melange of garlicy cheesy winey goodness swathed in wood and foil that you then take your bread and lovingly swaddle it in molten cheese for a confectionary delight.
We ate the entire box and my whole loaf of bread between three of us. I tell you, it blew the fondu we had the night before clean out of the water, and that was good fondu. One of the best meals I've ever had and quite unexpectedly too. I'm normally not a fan of moldy cheeses and I was somewhat dubious until I tried the stuff. I dont know if it'll be possible to bring some of the stuff home (cheese is difficult to import and the best cheeses aren't pasturized) but maybe I can find it in the States.
Tune in next time for more adventures!
Ciao!
Friday, November 18, 2011
I'm not dead, I promise
I apologize for the lack of posts for the past week. It has been a very busy week for me. The entire ALICE collaboration is at CERN this week for alice week, a series of seminars and talks that are designed to keep everyone up to date on what is going on and what needs to be done. Mostly it was over my head and thus ten hour days sitting in lectures that were both irrelevant to what I was doing and beyond my comprehension was trying. However, it was also useful to be there so as to absorb something by osmosis, so I suppose it was good to have gone. Regardless, I'm tired.
Good news as far as my thesis is concerned. Remember that spiky graph I showed you that I said was a rho particle peak? That was a major milestone not only with my thesis, but also with Creigton's DOE grant. What this means is I wont be roasted and fed in the cafeteria as a warning to other students. It also means I'm getting an A thus far in independent research (one of the myriad fill in the blank credit hours that allow me to get degree credits while working on my thesis). Next I'll be working with a bunch of data created via a simulator in order to perfect my code before using it on vast, vast quantities of real data in order to do useful and mysterious things with it the likes of which you'll never know! Or, more to the point, I'm not sure yet what exactly I'll do after I do a lot of work with the simulations. See how many rhos there are for a given number of tracks (that multiplicity thing I was talkin about) most likely.
In other news, I did go to Charlie's (the pub in St. Genis I've mentioned before) yesterday with several people, so I'm meeting people and making friends. There is one in particular named Rose who is, if anything, an even louder more exuberant person than I am and at least as nerdy. Moreso because she's been a dungeon master while I've only ever played DnD. Also there was Bo (of extreme mountain hiking fame), Jai (one of the OSU students I share an office with), Dhevan (post doc at OSU, pronounced Dave-in) and a number of people I had seen but never yet met. It was good times with plenty of beer!
It has started to get cold here, below freezing the past two nights (and not much above during the day). Clear and sunny though, which makes walking to CERN in the morning with everything covered in frost quite pretty. And cold.
My main task now is to survive until Christmas! I'll be back in the US for about a month (working at STAR in New York for all but a week or so of that). I'm greatly looking forward to Christmas in Boise with my cousins, siblings, parents, and various aunts and uncles. Gonna be fun! And good food. And skiing. By God there shall be skiing.
Until next time!
Ciao!
Good news as far as my thesis is concerned. Remember that spiky graph I showed you that I said was a rho particle peak? That was a major milestone not only with my thesis, but also with Creigton's DOE grant. What this means is I wont be roasted and fed in the cafeteria as a warning to other students. It also means I'm getting an A thus far in independent research (one of the myriad fill in the blank credit hours that allow me to get degree credits while working on my thesis). Next I'll be working with a bunch of data created via a simulator in order to perfect my code before using it on vast, vast quantities of real data in order to do useful and mysterious things with it the likes of which you'll never know! Or, more to the point, I'm not sure yet what exactly I'll do after I do a lot of work with the simulations. See how many rhos there are for a given number of tracks (that multiplicity thing I was talkin about) most likely.
In other news, I did go to Charlie's (the pub in St. Genis I've mentioned before) yesterday with several people, so I'm meeting people and making friends. There is one in particular named Rose who is, if anything, an even louder more exuberant person than I am and at least as nerdy. Moreso because she's been a dungeon master while I've only ever played DnD. Also there was Bo (of extreme mountain hiking fame), Jai (one of the OSU students I share an office with), Dhevan (post doc at OSU, pronounced Dave-in) and a number of people I had seen but never yet met. It was good times with plenty of beer!
It has started to get cold here, below freezing the past two nights (and not much above during the day). Clear and sunny though, which makes walking to CERN in the morning with everything covered in frost quite pretty. And cold.
My main task now is to survive until Christmas! I'll be back in the US for about a month (working at STAR in New York for all but a week or so of that). I'm greatly looking forward to Christmas in Boise with my cousins, siblings, parents, and various aunts and uncles. Gonna be fun! And good food. And skiing. By God there shall be skiing.
Until next time!
Ciao!
Saturday, November 12, 2011
How to find a rho particle
So I'll bet you all have been thinking "Gosh James, you do all these cool things over there. But aren't you doing SCIENCE? What about all the science you're supposed to be doing?" Well tough. It's boring reading and besides, its top secret. Dont give me that puppy dog look. Ok, FINE I'll tell you. But you owe me. (Warning, the following contains copious amounts of science and should not be injested after large meals).
Basically what I've been doing for the past several weeks is trying, with liberal amounts of help from Bjorn (the post doc here with me if you'll recall) to meet the first major milestone of my thesis: finding a rho particle. For those who do not know, my thesis is to determine rho production as a function of multiplicity for ultraperipheral collisions. Dont worry, it's not really half as scary as it sounds.
To start, what is a rho particle? A rho particle is a kind of subatomic particle that is made up of quarks (like most matter, except for leptons like electrons, but no body likes them anyway). To be specific, the rho is a meson which means that it is made up of one quark and one antiquark. since quarks are the smallest things we know about (well, excepting strings but I really dont know much about those except that they vibrate), we consider quarks the building blocks of matter. Kind of like meat and potatoes are the building blocks of food.
Rho mesons are made up of two quarks: an up quark and an anti-down quark. Dont bother with what up and down mean, its just a flavor (yes, flavor) of quark. Most matter is up and down quarks and antiquarks, but there are also charmed, strange, top, and bottom quarks. My task is to look at the data that ALICE detectors glean from collisions at the LHC (large hardon collider for those of you who are familiar with fun typos) and try to pick out rho mesons.
The other parts of my thesis involve the terms "multiplicity" and "ultraperipheral." The multiplicity of an event (collision) is how many things are produced. If a collision produces 4 things (any things, regardless of what they are) then the event had a multiplicity of 4. Millions and millions of these collisions happen very quickly so a lot of data is produced, filtered, and stored in huge files, but various attributes such as the momentum of the particle, the path they followed (the particle's "track"), the speed of the particle (so we can get the mass from the momentum), and many others are all saved and kept together so that all this data can be analyzed.
The last thing I need to explain about my thesis is the term ultraperipheral. There are three kinds of collisions that can happen when you fling two atomic nuclei at eachother. One, they can collide directly in a central collision. This breaks each nucleus apart into a very hot soup of quarks and gluons (dont worry about what a gluon is, it doesn't matter for my purposes). Another, they can brush past eachother, just barely scraping eachothers edge in a peripheral collision. Or third, they can pass close enough by eachother to interact, but still miss in an ultraperipheral collision. I'm looking at ultraperipheral collisions because they produce the least amount of particles (lowest multiplicity) so I have a lot less noise to deal with when trying to see the rhos.
Sadly we cannot detect rho particles directly because they have very very very short half lives and decay without getting a chance to even move off the beam line in the experiment. However, they decay into particles called pions (another kind of meson) which we can detect. Most things decay into pions, so our task is to try and filter out which pions came from rho particles.
To do this, we look at something called the invariant mass. Most of you, I'm sure, are familiar with Einstein's equation E=mc^2. This quantity is, in fact, the invariant mass: the mass of the particle when it isn't moving. As things appraoch the speed of light, they get more and more massive, so we want something to look at that doesn't change with how fast something is going. This equation is actually a specific case for a particle at rest. If you throw momentum into the mix, the equation becomes E^2 = (mc^2)^2+(pc)^2 where p is the momentum and c is the speed of light.
Dont worry, those are the only two equations I'm going to throw at you. Suffice to say, you can find the mass of the original particle from the momentum and mass of the particles that it decayed into. You can then graph this, and viola! The more parent particles (particles that decayed into the pions) that have a given invariant mass, the larger a bump there will be at that mass. The rho particle has a mass of 770 MeV/c^2. This is in terms of energy (in mega electron volts) over c^2, which is much easer to deal with than converting the mass of something as small as a subatomic particle into pounds or kilograms.
So you get this:
Yes, that is a hideous mess of black. We can't see anything from that, so we would rather look at it like this:
That at least shows something, even if it is still a bit of a mess. We can see that most of our particles are where it isn't aqua, over from masses of 0 to 4. The bottom axis is the invariant mass for the particles, the right is the multiplicity of the event. Well, I'm interested in the area around 770 MeV/c^2, or on this mass scale 0.77 (as it is in GeV or giga electron volts. Insert Doc. Brown quote here involving jigawatts). So, zooming in also on the low end of multiplicity (remember, ultraperipheral events have less stuff flying out of them):
This is starting to show something, though it is still hard to tell what. So we use a handy tool called an x-projection. This takes everything and looks at it side on, as if it were all projected onto the x axis:
So we can see here several spikes that indicate different particles. Well, there are too many spikes here because the method we were using to identify different particles particles isn't very good. So we had a lot of extra other stuff here. But, there is hope because there is that large buldge between 0.6 and 0.8 which is where the rho should be! Next we tried looking at the data filtered a different way in hopes of cutting out a lot of the unneeded stuff:
That was a miserable failure. The graphs are actually identicle. Another part of our problem here is we dont really have enough events to get a good clean graph. We're fighting statistics and losing (damn you statistics). So we decided to throw out the particle identification all together and assume that EVERYTHING was pions. Surprisingly this helped a bit:
But not a whole heck of a lot. It's still got spikes, even if the around where the rho should be is a little sharper. Now, remember what I said about ultraperipheral collisions (UPC) being what I was looking at? Well none of those charts were for UPC events. So we applied yet another filter designed to look at just UPC events and we got:
Which is still a mess looked at this way, but if you look in the bottom left corner, you see something! A little spec. Lets look at it in technocolor:
Wahoo! There's definately something, and it is definately around the range that the rho should be at. So we zoom in as we want as low multiplicity as we can (the best being if only two pions were produced because that would be the cleanest signal):
Better, but for the best we can just look at events with a multiplicity of 2. zooming in there we see:
Which from here is a pretty pretty rainbow right at .77 GeV/c^2. Projecting it:
That my friends is what I've been looking for. It could still use some cleaning up, but that peak there is what we in the particle biz call a rho peak. It's a distribution over a range of masses rather than exactly at .77 because quantum mechanics doesn't like things to be well defined or make sense, but the majority of the particles of average are right around there.
So thanks for reading, if you made it through that without being bored or confused then I succeeded in not including too much information and being witty and entertaining as usual. That is pretty much how analysis here works: find something you can graph that will show your particle, and engage in a vicious battle with the data, histograms, and bugs in your code in order to force it to its knees and surrender its information. It never goes down without a fight.
Until next time!
Ciao!
Basically what I've been doing for the past several weeks is trying, with liberal amounts of help from Bjorn (the post doc here with me if you'll recall) to meet the first major milestone of my thesis: finding a rho particle. For those who do not know, my thesis is to determine rho production as a function of multiplicity for ultraperipheral collisions. Dont worry, it's not really half as scary as it sounds.
To start, what is a rho particle? A rho particle is a kind of subatomic particle that is made up of quarks (like most matter, except for leptons like electrons, but no body likes them anyway). To be specific, the rho is a meson which means that it is made up of one quark and one antiquark. since quarks are the smallest things we know about (well, excepting strings but I really dont know much about those except that they vibrate), we consider quarks the building blocks of matter. Kind of like meat and potatoes are the building blocks of food.
Rho mesons are made up of two quarks: an up quark and an anti-down quark. Dont bother with what up and down mean, its just a flavor (yes, flavor) of quark. Most matter is up and down quarks and antiquarks, but there are also charmed, strange, top, and bottom quarks. My task is to look at the data that ALICE detectors glean from collisions at the LHC (large hardon collider for those of you who are familiar with fun typos) and try to pick out rho mesons.
The other parts of my thesis involve the terms "multiplicity" and "ultraperipheral." The multiplicity of an event (collision) is how many things are produced. If a collision produces 4 things (any things, regardless of what they are) then the event had a multiplicity of 4. Millions and millions of these collisions happen very quickly so a lot of data is produced, filtered, and stored in huge files, but various attributes such as the momentum of the particle, the path they followed (the particle's "track"), the speed of the particle (so we can get the mass from the momentum), and many others are all saved and kept together so that all this data can be analyzed.
The last thing I need to explain about my thesis is the term ultraperipheral. There are three kinds of collisions that can happen when you fling two atomic nuclei at eachother. One, they can collide directly in a central collision. This breaks each nucleus apart into a very hot soup of quarks and gluons (dont worry about what a gluon is, it doesn't matter for my purposes). Another, they can brush past eachother, just barely scraping eachothers edge in a peripheral collision. Or third, they can pass close enough by eachother to interact, but still miss in an ultraperipheral collision. I'm looking at ultraperipheral collisions because they produce the least amount of particles (lowest multiplicity) so I have a lot less noise to deal with when trying to see the rhos.
Sadly we cannot detect rho particles directly because they have very very very short half lives and decay without getting a chance to even move off the beam line in the experiment. However, they decay into particles called pions (another kind of meson) which we can detect. Most things decay into pions, so our task is to try and filter out which pions came from rho particles.
To do this, we look at something called the invariant mass. Most of you, I'm sure, are familiar with Einstein's equation E=mc^2. This quantity is, in fact, the invariant mass: the mass of the particle when it isn't moving. As things appraoch the speed of light, they get more and more massive, so we want something to look at that doesn't change with how fast something is going. This equation is actually a specific case for a particle at rest. If you throw momentum into the mix, the equation becomes E^2 = (mc^2)^2+(pc)^2 where p is the momentum and c is the speed of light.
Dont worry, those are the only two equations I'm going to throw at you. Suffice to say, you can find the mass of the original particle from the momentum and mass of the particles that it decayed into. You can then graph this, and viola! The more parent particles (particles that decayed into the pions) that have a given invariant mass, the larger a bump there will be at that mass. The rho particle has a mass of 770 MeV/c^2. This is in terms of energy (in mega electron volts) over c^2, which is much easer to deal with than converting the mass of something as small as a subatomic particle into pounds or kilograms.
So you get this:
Yes, that is a hideous mess of black. We can't see anything from that, so we would rather look at it like this:
That at least shows something, even if it is still a bit of a mess. We can see that most of our particles are where it isn't aqua, over from masses of 0 to 4. The bottom axis is the invariant mass for the particles, the right is the multiplicity of the event. Well, I'm interested in the area around 770 MeV/c^2, or on this mass scale 0.77 (as it is in GeV or giga electron volts. Insert Doc. Brown quote here involving jigawatts). So, zooming in also on the low end of multiplicity (remember, ultraperipheral events have less stuff flying out of them):
This is starting to show something, though it is still hard to tell what. So we use a handy tool called an x-projection. This takes everything and looks at it side on, as if it were all projected onto the x axis:
So we can see here several spikes that indicate different particles. Well, there are too many spikes here because the method we were using to identify different particles particles isn't very good. So we had a lot of extra other stuff here. But, there is hope because there is that large buldge between 0.6 and 0.8 which is where the rho should be! Next we tried looking at the data filtered a different way in hopes of cutting out a lot of the unneeded stuff:
That was a miserable failure. The graphs are actually identicle. Another part of our problem here is we dont really have enough events to get a good clean graph. We're fighting statistics and losing (damn you statistics). So we decided to throw out the particle identification all together and assume that EVERYTHING was pions. Surprisingly this helped a bit:
But not a whole heck of a lot. It's still got spikes, even if the around where the rho should be is a little sharper. Now, remember what I said about ultraperipheral collisions (UPC) being what I was looking at? Well none of those charts were for UPC events. So we applied yet another filter designed to look at just UPC events and we got:
Which is still a mess looked at this way, but if you look in the bottom left corner, you see something! A little spec. Lets look at it in technocolor:
Wahoo! There's definately something, and it is definately around the range that the rho should be at. So we zoom in as we want as low multiplicity as we can (the best being if only two pions were produced because that would be the cleanest signal):
Better, but for the best we can just look at events with a multiplicity of 2. zooming in there we see:
Which from here is a pretty pretty rainbow right at .77 GeV/c^2. Projecting it:
That my friends is what I've been looking for. It could still use some cleaning up, but that peak there is what we in the particle biz call a rho peak. It's a distribution over a range of masses rather than exactly at .77 because quantum mechanics doesn't like things to be well defined or make sense, but the majority of the particles of average are right around there.
So thanks for reading, if you made it through that without being bored or confused then I succeeded in not including too much information and being witty and entertaining as usual. That is pretty much how analysis here works: find something you can graph that will show your particle, and engage in a vicious battle with the data, histograms, and bugs in your code in order to force it to its knees and surrender its information. It never goes down without a fight.
Until next time!
Ciao!
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