Greetings one and all, I apologize for the delay in posts I've been rather busy, particularly getting ready for an upcoming presentation to the monthly meeting of the UPC analysis group (UPC = Ultra Peripheral Collisions, a type of collision between atomic nuclii where they miss, but are close enough that they still interact via electromagnetic forces). I've been struggling to debug a macro that will draw a nice pretty picture for me to use in the UPC meeting and that will, eventually, be the foundation of my thesis. First I have to get it working...
The basic problem is that there are two types of data files that we use here: ESD files and AOD files. Don't ask me what they stand for because for all I know they are secret code for secret things hidden subliminally in the file once you convert it to binary and play it backwards while watching the Wizard of Oz (I buried ALICE...). Anyway, ESD files are the broad, all encompassing data files that are produced by the ALICE DQM (Data Quality Management) team from the raw data that comes off the detector. AOD files are more distilled and compact, having more events (data produced when two particles collide) in them but focusing on certain types of data.
The macro I'm editing was written for ESD files and I'm trying to make it work for AOD files. Apparently two different groups of people wrote the software for ESDs and AODs without documenting things much for either kind of file and yet failed to make AOD related functions do the same thigns as ESD related functions, or sometimes it has a different name, or sometimes the link to what little information there IS on the code is broken... Grrr.
As anyone who has tried to teach themselves something that was written by scientists for themselves then posted "for the convenience of others" online can attest to, scientists are terrible, TERRIBLE, when it comes to both introductions, and moving smoothly from simple to complex. Its like they forgot every feeling of frustration that THEY once had on these lines when they were learning similar things when they were me. That and they all work 80 hour weeks at their normal jobs and have no time.
Anyway, that's pretty much what I'm up to: working on this so I can go be the center of attention for a while in front of people who will likely tear my presentation up one side and down the other while offering helpful suggestions I dont understand and may not be relevant to what I'll be doing. The things I do for attention... And a Master's degree.
Oh, and speaking of being the center of attention, the article has been published!
http://alicematters.web.cern.ch/focusonjamesross is where it's at. Check it out!
Until next time!
Caio
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
An interview and a meeting
Greetings greetings one and all!
Two things of note recently. First off we'll do the more fun one because I'm most excited by that. I was interviewed for the ALICE internal news thingy (ALICE Matters) which basically is an internal document that goes around so that this bloated, complex organization of introverted egoists can have some way to tell what is going on outside their own narrow specialty.
The woman doing the interview had just finished up her master's in science communication (a very difficult subject as any of you who have ever tried to read anything written by a scientist can attest to) at Imperial College in London. She applied for the job here at ALICE through a connection of her adviser's and here she is, less than three weeks after her master's degree working at a huge complex experiment. I go into detail here because she is rather cute and I offered to show her around. We'll see how that pans out (no doubt further updates will occur as news warrants). She's entertaining and just slightly awkward in an amusing scientist way, which I can dig.
The interview was basically on my background and interests, as well as a bit on how and why I wound up at CERN. I gave the usual interview things: marathons, martial arts, not in as great detail as I would have liked to (I enjoy bragging), but this was just a preliminary interview to give her a place to start from. Tomorrow we're doing lunch for a second, more detailed interview.
Beyond that (obviously more important to me at the moment) interview and girl, I have been settling in here and starting to really dive into how data analysis is done. The program used at ALICE for data analysis is called aliroot, which is a bunch of add ons to a program called Root. I've been learning to use root for the past several months. The significance of this to this post is that I went to my first meeting here where I actually understood one of the discussions they were having! I was quite excited.
Ok, so the way meetings here at CERN work is there are a number of scientists who belong to different projects who meet regularly to discuss various and sundry issues relating to their sub group at ALICE (or whatever greater experiment or group they belong to). This particular meeting had to do with the software developement of aliroot. In general scientists in these meetings fall into a number of social groupings. The meeting coordinator physicist tends to keep things moving and on topic. The effective presenter physicist is a physicist who is capable of presenting their topic at a level anyone with a basic understanding can understand and will convey it at a volume that everyone can hear (even though listening via the online meeting tool called EVO). Needless to say this is a theoretical physicist that no one has ever come across yet. The more common varieties of physicist are the quiet mumbling and/or heavy accent physicist, the somewhat lost physicist (my general state of being), the loud and/or angry detractor physicist, and the endlessly questioning physicist.
The last two in this group seem to exist for the sole purpose of extending meetings well beyond their scheduled boundaries. There were one each of the loud and angry detractor physicist and the endlessly questioning physicist. In this meeting's case, the questioning physicist was also a crotchety endlessly questioning physicist.
The former can be of use in that they keep the other phycisists honest and makes sure that pipe dreams dont waste time and resources. On the other hand, they can be an impediment to progress by denying that anything but the status quo can work and we should stopwasting our time trying. Or, in this paricuar meeting's case, nothing works so everyone (else) need to do things faster and better.
Crotchety endless questioning physicist was half paying attention and answered his phone three or four times in the course of the meeting and in between yelled loudly about various questions he had. He had to yell, granted, because only half the personal microphones set up around the table actually worked and neither he nor detractor physicist had a working one (which just added to the fun).
Needless to say, the meeting went over by about 45 minutes (this was an hour and 20 minute meeting by the schedule) and we never did arrive at a consensus for at least one of the discussions. Meeting coordinator physicist was quite frustrated by the end, and I was giggling silently to myself whilst trying to pay attention and learn something from what was going on around me. I'm fairly certain I learned more of politics than of physics in the course of that meeting...
Until next time campers!
Caio!
Two things of note recently. First off we'll do the more fun one because I'm most excited by that. I was interviewed for the ALICE internal news thingy (ALICE Matters) which basically is an internal document that goes around so that this bloated, complex organization of introverted egoists can have some way to tell what is going on outside their own narrow specialty.
The woman doing the interview had just finished up her master's in science communication (a very difficult subject as any of you who have ever tried to read anything written by a scientist can attest to) at Imperial College in London. She applied for the job here at ALICE through a connection of her adviser's and here she is, less than three weeks after her master's degree working at a huge complex experiment. I go into detail here because she is rather cute and I offered to show her around. We'll see how that pans out (no doubt further updates will occur as news warrants). She's entertaining and just slightly awkward in an amusing scientist way, which I can dig.
The interview was basically on my background and interests, as well as a bit on how and why I wound up at CERN. I gave the usual interview things: marathons, martial arts, not in as great detail as I would have liked to (I enjoy bragging), but this was just a preliminary interview to give her a place to start from. Tomorrow we're doing lunch for a second, more detailed interview.
Beyond that (obviously more important to me at the moment) interview and girl, I have been settling in here and starting to really dive into how data analysis is done. The program used at ALICE for data analysis is called aliroot, which is a bunch of add ons to a program called Root. I've been learning to use root for the past several months. The significance of this to this post is that I went to my first meeting here where I actually understood one of the discussions they were having! I was quite excited.
Ok, so the way meetings here at CERN work is there are a number of scientists who belong to different projects who meet regularly to discuss various and sundry issues relating to their sub group at ALICE (or whatever greater experiment or group they belong to). This particular meeting had to do with the software developement of aliroot. In general scientists in these meetings fall into a number of social groupings. The meeting coordinator physicist tends to keep things moving and on topic. The effective presenter physicist is a physicist who is capable of presenting their topic at a level anyone with a basic understanding can understand and will convey it at a volume that everyone can hear (even though listening via the online meeting tool called EVO). Needless to say this is a theoretical physicist that no one has ever come across yet. The more common varieties of physicist are the quiet mumbling and/or heavy accent physicist, the somewhat lost physicist (my general state of being), the loud and/or angry detractor physicist, and the endlessly questioning physicist.
The last two in this group seem to exist for the sole purpose of extending meetings well beyond their scheduled boundaries. There were one each of the loud and angry detractor physicist and the endlessly questioning physicist. In this meeting's case, the questioning physicist was also a crotchety endlessly questioning physicist.
The former can be of use in that they keep the other phycisists honest and makes sure that pipe dreams dont waste time and resources. On the other hand, they can be an impediment to progress by denying that anything but the status quo can work and we should stopwasting our time trying. Or, in this paricuar meeting's case, nothing works so everyone (else) need to do things faster and better.
Crotchety endless questioning physicist was half paying attention and answered his phone three or four times in the course of the meeting and in between yelled loudly about various questions he had. He had to yell, granted, because only half the personal microphones set up around the table actually worked and neither he nor detractor physicist had a working one (which just added to the fun).
Needless to say, the meeting went over by about 45 minutes (this was an hour and 20 minute meeting by the schedule) and we never did arrive at a consensus for at least one of the discussions. Meeting coordinator physicist was quite frustrated by the end, and I was giggling silently to myself whilst trying to pay attention and learn something from what was going on around me. I'm fairly certain I learned more of politics than of physics in the course of that meeting...
Until next time campers!
Caio!
Friday, October 21, 2011
Photos and clubs
Greetings devoted admirers! Been a good couple of days as I continue my certifications, training, commuting, and the like. I was able to get some photos of various areas around CERN and ALICE which I can share with you (the quality is bad because they're from my phone). However the main topic of interest is (are?) the clubs on site. There are a number of them, several of which I am interested in and two that I have tried out thus far.
First, last Wednesday I went to the CERN salsa club for a trial lesson. I arrived about half an hour early because the website is a dirty rotten liar. The instructor is extremely cute, maybe a few years older than I am, and (most unfortunately) seems to be married to her male dance prop. Ah well. There were several attractive women in the audience as well, so I will certainly be back. Oh yes, and the salsa was good. For those of you who have done some salsa dancing, this is apparently Puerto Rican salsa whereas in the US is generally Cuban salsa. Or vice versa. I'm not really sure. In any even there are some differences in how partners change sides and in how the lead signals to his partner what's about to happen, but overall it is quite similar and I picked up the little differences right away.
The class is taught in French so I had to quickly learn the french names for the moves (though that was simple enough as she demonstrated each). This is the beginner course as I'm really not that good at Salsa. Yet. The lesson went on for an hour and we did the usual change partners every so often. There was actually an even number of men and women which is unusual at this kind of thing. The gamut of ethnicity was fantastic. Everyone spoke French of course, and most spoke some English at least, but there was an Itialian, French, German (Basically everything the three sections of Switzerland pretend not to be), Venezuelan, British and likely others. My french is good enough that I was able to talk a bit with each as we danced. Or at least apologize if I stepped on their feet.
The second club I was able to go to was a Kenjutsu class. That was today (Friday). I had been in touch with a member of the club and I arranged to come for a trial lesson. The lessons take place in a small warehouse like building labeled "pump station" that has a bathroom built onto it. Apparently it hasn't been used for much in years and some of the clubs took it over for various activities where people sweat and.or try to damage eachother.
As most of you probably know I have extensive martial arts experience, particularly in Tae Kwon Do which I have practiced off and on for a good eighteen years. Neither that nor the others arts I have dabbled in (hapkido and tai chi) use weapons. Kenjutsu is a sword art which is both very different and infinitly cool. The stances are all out of whack (your feet are pointing opposite directions for the basic front stance) and the "too close" limit is four feet further out than it would be for Tae Kwon Do. Hapkido and Tai Chi don't have a too close limit. The main instructor wasn't there, but a great five foot and zero inch french guy named Jean Claude (not Van Damme, sadly) who spoke enough English that I at least understood what I completely didn't understand.
He started by teaching me some basic cuts (ones that I knew from what little sword I did during Tae Kwon Do from my kendo enthusiast instructor). He would show me a cut and how to do it correctly (and correct my stance every swing) then lead the rest of the class in some of the forms before coming back to me. The forms are very cool because they involve two people attacking and defending back and forth. If one person makes a mistake, they are liable to get bopped on the head or some such if their opponent isn't controlled enough. Good incentive.
Jean Claud taught me a couple of basic striking exercises and the first few moves of the first kata (form). One of the nice things about this art is everything you do looks cool because you're holding a sword. You don't have to be able to do much more than basic movement to do a cool eight point attack all around you (my favorite exercise he showed me). For the basic moves all you have to do is line up your heels, put your front foot out, back foot other out, back strait, front knee bent, shoulders loose, right hand relaxed and gripped correctly, left hand tight and gripped correctly, cut with the top 10 centimeters, hold the sword naturally, good, exept your stance is off and your grip is slack, no now too tight, turn a little this way and above all, relax! Yea.. there are a lot of things to do before muscle memory takes over. I had a lot of fun and will certainly be back. at 10 francs for a 90 minute lesson, quite worth it.
And now, photos!
Here is my room in the house in Saint-Genis-Pouilly. Actually quite comfortable, on the second floor near the laundry room and the bathroom. The animal posters on the wall to the left came with the room. The bed is slightly too short to be comfortable and surrounded (lord what a terrible design) by wood on three sides that goes up above the mattress but with not enough room for your feet to stick off the end. Whoever designed it was either four feet six inches tall or had never slept in a bed. I use the pull out one underneath.
Here is part of the beautiful walk towards the CERN Meyrin site, a suburb of Geneva. The maples are quite lovely in fall as you can see. Fall so far has either been rainy and mild or clear and cold.
Here we have the sun rising on the mountains in the background. I liked this because the very tops of the mountains are in full sunlight but nothing else is, which you can see if you enlarge the image. A typical morning in St. Genis.
Here is more of the countryside of St. Genis, this time out towards the site containing the ALICE experiment, about six or seven kilometers around the LHC ring from Meyrin. It is actually much closer to my house than Meyrin. And, as you can see on the right, in a developing area.
Here is a view into Switzerland toward the CERN Meyrin site. Farmland, mostly vinyards, covers the rolling hills out that way. This is about the only angle that doesn't have mountains in it. Geneva is in a plane that pushes its way into the mountains from the French side. France surrounds Geneva on three sides so the border is a little confusing around here.
Here we have part of CERN itself. This is more or less in the middle of the Meyrin site. Those who have been there (Andy for example) should recognize the dome structure in the distance. That's where Andy and I got off the bus. There was an Angels and Demons display in there when we visited.
Here is another view of the site, facing the other direction and a little further northwest from the previous picture. A good view of the mountains.
Here is the sign for ALICE at point 2 of the LHC.
The main building for the ALICE experiment. The picture is a true scale painting of the experiment, buried 80 meters below the building. The thing is 16 meters high. Biiig.
This is one of the other buildings in the area, where they store gas that is used in some of the detectors (the TPC for instance uses a mixture of argon and methane). It is pumped down below from here, but is up here both in case of a leak in one of the containers (oxygen is carefully monitored down at the detector) and so that it can be easily swapped out when a tank runs dry.
This is inside the ALICE main building. The yellow thing is a crane that is used to bring things up and down the pit leading to the ALICE experiment. All of the detectors were lowered down, in pieces, and assembled below. You can see a detector part attached here, ready to be lowered once the current LHC run ends for maintenance and the pit can be opened. I am not sure which detector it is a part of.
Here is the detector up close. The ALICE experiment is arranged in a cylinder around the beam so that it can detect particles at all angles. Some of the detectors do not fully surround the beam, and I'm betting this is another section to be added to whatever detector it is a part of to get more of an angle. For scale, this detector piece is about five feet wide at the top.
Here we have the ALICE control room, where the shiznit happens, yo. The tall guy standing in the photo is Bjorn Nilsen, the post doc who has been helping me get settled in and has been teaching me about the EM Calorimeter and data analysis at ALICE. There is a second row of computers that he is facing, and more monitors (that he is looking at) that aren't seen in this picture. Also sort of behind and to the right of the camera is where the shift leader sits.
And here is the EMCal station! This is in a room upstairs above the control room along with several other detector stations. There are three such rooms housing all the detector displays where experts do their work. The left two screens are one computer with a view onto the control panel for the EMCal. The right two show the DAQ (data acquisition) system for the EMcal and a display of the log book so that the expert can see what is going on and any errors that pop up.
I hope that was interesting for all of you! A bit of a long post, but I figured I'd make it one post rather than two.
Until next time!
Caio.
First, last Wednesday I went to the CERN salsa club for a trial lesson. I arrived about half an hour early because the website is a dirty rotten liar. The instructor is extremely cute, maybe a few years older than I am, and (most unfortunately) seems to be married to her male dance prop. Ah well. There were several attractive women in the audience as well, so I will certainly be back. Oh yes, and the salsa was good. For those of you who have done some salsa dancing, this is apparently Puerto Rican salsa whereas in the US is generally Cuban salsa. Or vice versa. I'm not really sure. In any even there are some differences in how partners change sides and in how the lead signals to his partner what's about to happen, but overall it is quite similar and I picked up the little differences right away.
The class is taught in French so I had to quickly learn the french names for the moves (though that was simple enough as she demonstrated each). This is the beginner course as I'm really not that good at Salsa. Yet. The lesson went on for an hour and we did the usual change partners every so often. There was actually an even number of men and women which is unusual at this kind of thing. The gamut of ethnicity was fantastic. Everyone spoke French of course, and most spoke some English at least, but there was an Itialian, French, German (Basically everything the three sections of Switzerland pretend not to be), Venezuelan, British and likely others. My french is good enough that I was able to talk a bit with each as we danced. Or at least apologize if I stepped on their feet.
The second club I was able to go to was a Kenjutsu class. That was today (Friday). I had been in touch with a member of the club and I arranged to come for a trial lesson. The lessons take place in a small warehouse like building labeled "pump station" that has a bathroom built onto it. Apparently it hasn't been used for much in years and some of the clubs took it over for various activities where people sweat and.or try to damage eachother.
As most of you probably know I have extensive martial arts experience, particularly in Tae Kwon Do which I have practiced off and on for a good eighteen years. Neither that nor the others arts I have dabbled in (hapkido and tai chi) use weapons. Kenjutsu is a sword art which is both very different and infinitly cool. The stances are all out of whack (your feet are pointing opposite directions for the basic front stance) and the "too close" limit is four feet further out than it would be for Tae Kwon Do. Hapkido and Tai Chi don't have a too close limit. The main instructor wasn't there, but a great five foot and zero inch french guy named Jean Claude (not Van Damme, sadly) who spoke enough English that I at least understood what I completely didn't understand.
He started by teaching me some basic cuts (ones that I knew from what little sword I did during Tae Kwon Do from my kendo enthusiast instructor). He would show me a cut and how to do it correctly (and correct my stance every swing) then lead the rest of the class in some of the forms before coming back to me. The forms are very cool because they involve two people attacking and defending back and forth. If one person makes a mistake, they are liable to get bopped on the head or some such if their opponent isn't controlled enough. Good incentive.
Jean Claud taught me a couple of basic striking exercises and the first few moves of the first kata (form). One of the nice things about this art is everything you do looks cool because you're holding a sword. You don't have to be able to do much more than basic movement to do a cool eight point attack all around you (my favorite exercise he showed me). For the basic moves all you have to do is line up your heels, put your front foot out, back foot other out, back strait, front knee bent, shoulders loose, right hand relaxed and gripped correctly, left hand tight and gripped correctly, cut with the top 10 centimeters, hold the sword naturally, good, exept your stance is off and your grip is slack, no now too tight, turn a little this way and above all, relax! Yea.. there are a lot of things to do before muscle memory takes over. I had a lot of fun and will certainly be back. at 10 francs for a 90 minute lesson, quite worth it.
And now, photos!
Here is my room in the house in Saint-Genis-Pouilly. Actually quite comfortable, on the second floor near the laundry room and the bathroom. The animal posters on the wall to the left came with the room. The bed is slightly too short to be comfortable and surrounded (lord what a terrible design) by wood on three sides that goes up above the mattress but with not enough room for your feet to stick off the end. Whoever designed it was either four feet six inches tall or had never slept in a bed. I use the pull out one underneath.
Here is part of the beautiful walk towards the CERN Meyrin site, a suburb of Geneva. The maples are quite lovely in fall as you can see. Fall so far has either been rainy and mild or clear and cold.
Here we have the sun rising on the mountains in the background. I liked this because the very tops of the mountains are in full sunlight but nothing else is, which you can see if you enlarge the image. A typical morning in St. Genis.
Here is more of the countryside of St. Genis, this time out towards the site containing the ALICE experiment, about six or seven kilometers around the LHC ring from Meyrin. It is actually much closer to my house than Meyrin. And, as you can see on the right, in a developing area.
Here is a view into Switzerland toward the CERN Meyrin site. Farmland, mostly vinyards, covers the rolling hills out that way. This is about the only angle that doesn't have mountains in it. Geneva is in a plane that pushes its way into the mountains from the French side. France surrounds Geneva on three sides so the border is a little confusing around here.
Here we have part of CERN itself. This is more or less in the middle of the Meyrin site. Those who have been there (Andy for example) should recognize the dome structure in the distance. That's where Andy and I got off the bus. There was an Angels and Demons display in there when we visited.
Here is another view of the site, facing the other direction and a little further northwest from the previous picture. A good view of the mountains.
Here is the sign for ALICE at point 2 of the LHC.
The main building for the ALICE experiment. The picture is a true scale painting of the experiment, buried 80 meters below the building. The thing is 16 meters high. Biiig.
This is one of the other buildings in the area, where they store gas that is used in some of the detectors (the TPC for instance uses a mixture of argon and methane). It is pumped down below from here, but is up here both in case of a leak in one of the containers (oxygen is carefully monitored down at the detector) and so that it can be easily swapped out when a tank runs dry.
This is inside the ALICE main building. The yellow thing is a crane that is used to bring things up and down the pit leading to the ALICE experiment. All of the detectors were lowered down, in pieces, and assembled below. You can see a detector part attached here, ready to be lowered once the current LHC run ends for maintenance and the pit can be opened. I am not sure which detector it is a part of.
Here is the detector up close. The ALICE experiment is arranged in a cylinder around the beam so that it can detect particles at all angles. Some of the detectors do not fully surround the beam, and I'm betting this is another section to be added to whatever detector it is a part of to get more of an angle. For scale, this detector piece is about five feet wide at the top.
Here we have the ALICE control room, where the shiznit happens, yo. The tall guy standing in the photo is Bjorn Nilsen, the post doc who has been helping me get settled in and has been teaching me about the EM Calorimeter and data analysis at ALICE. There is a second row of computers that he is facing, and more monitors (that he is looking at) that aren't seen in this picture. Also sort of behind and to the right of the camera is where the shift leader sits.
And here is the EMCal station! This is in a room upstairs above the control room along with several other detector stations. There are three such rooms housing all the detector displays where experts do their work. The left two screens are one computer with a view onto the control panel for the EMCal. The right two show the DAQ (data acquisition) system for the EMcal and a display of the log book so that the expert can see what is going on and any errors that pop up.I hope that was interesting for all of you! A bit of a long post, but I figured I'd make it one post rather than two.
Until next time!
Caio.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Four Roundabouts and an endorphin
Yesterday I walked home from cern, which takes about an hour. I thought my landlady (Yiota) said it was around 9 kilometers, but it seems to be closer to five (I walk fast). It was quite a lovely walk!
Fall is my favorite time of year and it was a gorgeous day. The walk takes me through four roundabouts (anglais pour rond-points) and through some nice little French neighborhoods. The sun was up, the leaves were yellow and red, and it was quite nice.
As I mentioned earlier I tend to go up and down after I move, and though this trip hasn't been so bad, there have been some minor downs and as I was walking home I hit one. Until the endorphins kicked in from walking. By the time I was half way home I felt great! So the moral of the story is if you're ever feeling stressed or upset or down in the dumps, pick a nice place and start walking! Its the natural narcotic.
Saint-Genis-Pouilly is a delightful little town on that part of France that tries to swallow Geneva, just across the border. It has been there for centuries, but really got going in the modern era largely thanks to CERN and the business and people that it brought to the area. There are some good restaurants, markets, wine shops (its France. I imagine if there are three buildings in a town it would be a house, a market, and a wine shop. And the market would have wine.), neighborhoods and apartments. Once in St. Genis my walk was along quiet roads lined by maple trees, schools, and the occasional park. In one of the schools I saw some kind of martial arts class going on. I didn't get a close enough look to see what kind, and a lot of the gis (uniforms) are similar.
I managed to find my house with no troubles thanks to my impeccable sense of direction. And the directions I printed out to avoid getting lost. That's all for now scientites! Enjoy that image of balletic Scientists!
Caio!
P.S. Please comment! I love comments!
P.P.S.
Fall is my favorite time of year and it was a gorgeous day. The walk takes me through four roundabouts (anglais pour rond-points) and through some nice little French neighborhoods. The sun was up, the leaves were yellow and red, and it was quite nice.
As I mentioned earlier I tend to go up and down after I move, and though this trip hasn't been so bad, there have been some minor downs and as I was walking home I hit one. Until the endorphins kicked in from walking. By the time I was half way home I felt great! So the moral of the story is if you're ever feeling stressed or upset or down in the dumps, pick a nice place and start walking! Its the natural narcotic.
Saint-Genis-Pouilly is a delightful little town on that part of France that tries to swallow Geneva, just across the border. It has been there for centuries, but really got going in the modern era largely thanks to CERN and the business and people that it brought to the area. There are some good restaurants, markets, wine shops (its France. I imagine if there are three buildings in a town it would be a house, a market, and a wine shop. And the market would have wine.), neighborhoods and apartments. Once in St. Genis my walk was along quiet roads lined by maple trees, schools, and the occasional park. In one of the schools I saw some kind of martial arts class going on. I didn't get a close enough look to see what kind, and a lot of the gis (uniforms) are similar.
I managed to find my house with no troubles thanks to my impeccable sense of direction. And the directions I printed out to avoid getting lost. That's all for now scientites! Enjoy that image of balletic Scientists!
Caio!
P.S. Please comment! I love comments!
P.P.S.
My first two days at CERN
Greetings one and all to my blog! Here I intend to chronicle significant events of my life at CERN on the ALICE experiment. While it may seem like a truly amazing opportunity (and it is) day to day business is handled just as it is in any other work place: you come in, you work on whatever it is you work on, you go get beer, you go to bed. Hopefully with some social interaction, though we are all scientists and engineers. Maybe the cleaning staff is capable of being social. The main difference is I get to throw around cool words and phrases like "electromagnetic calorimeter" and "control room." That and if I touch the wrong button I can set myself in debt for the next 50,000 years for doing millions of dollars worth of damage to a valuable experiment.
My first day here passed in a bleary haze as I was up at 5:20 am in Omaha for a 7 am flight, and I arrived here in Geneva at 7:45 am the next day. Factor in a seven hour time difference, but even so that's a long time to travel. Since the best way to cope with jet lag is to stay up until nightfall, I was nodding all day and didn't get much useful done (not for lack of trying).
The house I'm renting a room in is actually rather nice and contains the landlady (Yiota Folka), her daughter (whom I have yet to meet actually), a chinese american grad student (also have yet to meet), myself, and a cleaning lady. My room is lovely with its own doorway and floor (thus satisfying my requirements for a living space). Closet space and real indoor walls as a nice added touch. I'll try to post pictures soon. It is located in St. Genis, France which is only a little ways from CERN, just across the border in Switzerland. I will likely be riding my bike most of the time.
Being tired, Bjorn Nilsen (the post doc who is here with me for my first month) and I both took several walks around to keep awake which turned out to be very interesting. I got a nice impromptu tour around the main site since he had worked here for years, and included various awesome nerdy things like "this is the bubble chamber where the nobel prize for discovering neutral current was won" or "in there is the world's first networkable computer" and the like. Granted one can wonder what the first networkable computer was networked to before the second one came along, but regardless, it was nerdy cool.
Following a few hours of attempted working, I returned to the house and slept for a good 13 hours. The next day I was considerably more awake which was good because the really cool stuff began. Bjorn took me to site two which is where the ALICE experiment is, 80 meters underground.
For a bit of background, the LHC (which was completed and turned on for the first time not too long ago) is the world's largest particle accelerator, 27 kilometers around and down to a depth of 172 meters underground (depending where you are). What they do here amounts to taking either protons or heavy ions (led, gold, other nuclei) and smashing them into each other at something around 99.99999% the speed of light and watching what happens. ALICE is one of the experiments that uses a mess of different detectors, built above ground and lowered 80 meters down a pit to be installed in the experiment itself, to detect what is going on.
The ALICE experiment:
He toured me around the ALICE site which was full of scientists doing sciency things on the computers, large buildings for building things, and lots of storage. Even a little BBQ stuck out of the way for nice weather. The main building contains the control room where the experiment (oddly enough) is controlled from. Around and above the control room are stations where the various detector experts do their thing like design new and better interfaces and fix what is broken as needed. The EMCal (Electromagnetic Calorimeter) that I am learning to be an expert on has its station on the second level. Outside of this area, but still inside the greater building, is the assembly hall which is a wide open space with a crane that can lower things down into a pit that leads to the experiment itself.
From the bottom up is experiment, , 8 or 10 feet of concrete blocks to block radiation, lots of platforms of electronics that control the detectors and talk to the control room, open air, ground level. Air is pumped down there via large pipes so people can breathe and it takes special training to be able to go down to the experiment. Sadly it will be a while before I can get down there because while I will have some of the training, I won't have a radiation badge and thus cannot go down unless everything is open, which it will be in January when they are installing some new components.
Up to this point I had been feeling rather woebegone and homesick (as always happens whenever I go somewhere new to stay a while) but the moment I went in the control room, I suddenly had found something familiar. For those who don't know I spend six months at a similar, if smaller, experiment called STAR on Long Island at Brookhaven National Lab. It has similar big words thrown around and many of the same acronyms (SVT, SMD, UPC, ZDCHV, ZOMGWTFISTHAT, and the like). Being somewhere where I at least knew what was going on, somewhere similar to a place that I had already powered through the angst phase of moving, was extremely helpful.
We then returned to the main site and I went to start my paperwork.
The paperwork is located in the CERN User's Center near the aptly named Restaurant 1. As I walked there I discovered that the sun had come out and with it came the smell of flowers, cut grass, fall foliage, and cars in a blend that I can only describe as Industrial Lucky Charms, which is exactly the smell that lucky charms would have if they were a fossil fuel. Maybe it was the restaurant experimenting with something. Or a chemical spill. Whatever it was it was all pervasive.
I didn't do much else today beyond go shopping for food in Geneva (a very pretty city for those of you who have never been) and do paperwork. Geneva is hideously expensive and St. Genis not much better. I will check in the next time something interesting happens and hopefully will have some pictures I didn't find online to share before too long.
Ciao!
My first day here passed in a bleary haze as I was up at 5:20 am in Omaha for a 7 am flight, and I arrived here in Geneva at 7:45 am the next day. Factor in a seven hour time difference, but even so that's a long time to travel. Since the best way to cope with jet lag is to stay up until nightfall, I was nodding all day and didn't get much useful done (not for lack of trying).
The house I'm renting a room in is actually rather nice and contains the landlady (Yiota Folka), her daughter (whom I have yet to meet actually), a chinese american grad student (also have yet to meet), myself, and a cleaning lady. My room is lovely with its own doorway and floor (thus satisfying my requirements for a living space). Closet space and real indoor walls as a nice added touch. I'll try to post pictures soon. It is located in St. Genis, France which is only a little ways from CERN, just across the border in Switzerland. I will likely be riding my bike most of the time.
Being tired, Bjorn Nilsen (the post doc who is here with me for my first month) and I both took several walks around to keep awake which turned out to be very interesting. I got a nice impromptu tour around the main site since he had worked here for years, and included various awesome nerdy things like "this is the bubble chamber where the nobel prize for discovering neutral current was won" or "in there is the world's first networkable computer" and the like. Granted one can wonder what the first networkable computer was networked to before the second one came along, but regardless, it was nerdy cool.
Following a few hours of attempted working, I returned to the house and slept for a good 13 hours. The next day I was considerably more awake which was good because the really cool stuff began. Bjorn took me to site two which is where the ALICE experiment is, 80 meters underground.
For a bit of background, the LHC (which was completed and turned on for the first time not too long ago) is the world's largest particle accelerator, 27 kilometers around and down to a depth of 172 meters underground (depending where you are). What they do here amounts to taking either protons or heavy ions (led, gold, other nuclei) and smashing them into each other at something around 99.99999% the speed of light and watching what happens. ALICE is one of the experiments that uses a mess of different detectors, built above ground and lowered 80 meters down a pit to be installed in the experiment itself, to detect what is going on.
The ALICE experiment:
He toured me around the ALICE site which was full of scientists doing sciency things on the computers, large buildings for building things, and lots of storage. Even a little BBQ stuck out of the way for nice weather. The main building contains the control room where the experiment (oddly enough) is controlled from. Around and above the control room are stations where the various detector experts do their thing like design new and better interfaces and fix what is broken as needed. The EMCal (Electromagnetic Calorimeter) that I am learning to be an expert on has its station on the second level. Outside of this area, but still inside the greater building, is the assembly hall which is a wide open space with a crane that can lower things down into a pit that leads to the experiment itself.
From the bottom up is experiment, , 8 or 10 feet of concrete blocks to block radiation, lots of platforms of electronics that control the detectors and talk to the control room, open air, ground level. Air is pumped down there via large pipes so people can breathe and it takes special training to be able to go down to the experiment. Sadly it will be a while before I can get down there because while I will have some of the training, I won't have a radiation badge and thus cannot go down unless everything is open, which it will be in January when they are installing some new components.
Up to this point I had been feeling rather woebegone and homesick (as always happens whenever I go somewhere new to stay a while) but the moment I went in the control room, I suddenly had found something familiar. For those who don't know I spend six months at a similar, if smaller, experiment called STAR on Long Island at Brookhaven National Lab. It has similar big words thrown around and many of the same acronyms (SVT, SMD, UPC, ZDCHV, ZOMGWTFISTHAT, and the like). Being somewhere where I at least knew what was going on, somewhere similar to a place that I had already powered through the angst phase of moving, was extremely helpful.
We then returned to the main site and I went to start my paperwork.
The paperwork is located in the CERN User's Center near the aptly named Restaurant 1. As I walked there I discovered that the sun had come out and with it came the smell of flowers, cut grass, fall foliage, and cars in a blend that I can only describe as Industrial Lucky Charms, which is exactly the smell that lucky charms would have if they were a fossil fuel. Maybe it was the restaurant experimenting with something. Or a chemical spill. Whatever it was it was all pervasive.
I didn't do much else today beyond go shopping for food in Geneva (a very pretty city for those of you who have never been) and do paperwork. Geneva is hideously expensive and St. Genis not much better. I will check in the next time something interesting happens and hopefully will have some pictures I didn't find online to share before too long.
Ciao!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)