There and back again - A steemSTEM meetup at CERNsteemCreated with Sketch.

in #steemstem7 years ago (edited)

Good evening to you,

After an truly amazing weekend with the steemSTEM community on our meetup an CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, I finally managed to peruse through my own pictures. In the hope of contributing to and complementing the already existing reports (some of which you can find collected here) I would like to add some more flavour.

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Geneva with the Jet d'Eau

Thursday

With the meeting inofficially beginning on thursday evening on the French side of the border, everyone including me was really busy with logistical organization, in particular finding each other in the first place. I think this emphasizes the amount of work the organizers such as @lemouth, @suesa had to invest into all of this.
Thankfully I (arriving by plane) managed to join the 2 train crews consisting of @lemouth, @grandpere, @fredrikaa, @suesa, @reggaemuffin right at the central station, from where we moved to our meeting spot in a pizza place with the help of @dber and all the other considerate drivers helping to get us around.

Friday morning

On the main day of the event, we met in the morning at CERN to take a look at its two permanent exhibitions, the "Microcosm" and the "Universe of Particles"

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Lagrangian density of the Standard Model (electroweak+strong interaction) with Higgs terms and some string theory below. Of course this is only a tiny snapshot of the #sexyscience involved.
Fun fact: If you manage to add gravity in there you'll be awarded a Nobel price

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The fog chamber: A particle detector you could construct yourself and set up in your living room

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The bottle of Champagne commemorating the discovery of the Higgs-Boson

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Cryptocurrency cold wallet Storage for collision data. Authentic 1TB hard drives with real experimental data were available for 10€ in the gift shop

Friday afternoon

After lunch, we migrated over to the French side of the border to visit our main piece of interest, the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector of the Large Hadron Collider. This experiment specifically designed to pick up signatures of the muon, a heavier relative of the electron, in order to study our standard model of particle physics.
After listening to @lemouth's lecture and learning more about detector construction we ventured downwards by pressurized elevator in two separate groups. ("If you're not seing me, you're doing it wrong ...")

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Some of CERN's mining operation data servers: A lot of work goes into quickly selecting physically interesting collision data on a hardware and software level

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CERN's most reliable detector: A tape strip detecting inflow of refreshingly cool air

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Here be dragons radiation: Access to the LHC main tunnel

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What the LHC main tunnel would look like if we had been allowed in. It basically looks the same anywhere along the 27km circumference

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Cross section of the CMS detector

It is worthwhile to lose a few more words on this piece as it was the main attraction of our visit:
The high energy LHC particle beam is localized within the small metal tube to a few micrometers lateral accuracy. The actual collision center is a few meters to the left along the beam trajectory and obstructed by the detector. When operational, the entire room is completely evacuated and permeated by a magnetic field of about 4 Tesla. Due to being under maintenance we got to see it in this open, partially disassembled state.

Saturday

On Saturday I tried to discover the city of Geneva by foot and went into the old town and particularly cathedral St. Pierre, before meeting up with @ana.luiza, @aurel.proorocu @fredrikaa and @howo later that day (and before some unexpectedly tense games of Perudo ^^). I have to say that Geneva is a very welcoming and historic city (albeit a little bit expensive) and definitely worth a visit.

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Maccabbee chapel within the cathedral. Note the beautiful stained windows and frescoes

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View over Geneva from the cathedral

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The old arsenal with cannons and some mosaic walls

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Geneva with the Jet d'Eau from the waterside

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This guy tried to eat @ana.luzia's feet. He did not succeed

Conclusion

10/10, would meet up again.
Thank you everyone for organizing this event and being there 😊.


Image sources

  • my own work

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Being A SteemStem Member

I have been so many times to Geneva, and I have never taken the time to visit the city... Shame on me. By the way, the Lagrangian on the projected blackboard is actually the full Standard Model Lagrangian. The tricl is that all indices are understood and there are thus implicit summations all over the place :D

PS: I will add a link to your post in my last one :)

Oh ok, I missed the Quantum Chromodynamics (strong interaction) parts then. Well I guessed I'm not used to such a compact notation ^^
Thanks, I will correct that

The field strength tensor squared term (the -1/4 F_{\mu\nu} F^{\mu\nu} term) is actually summed over all the three gauge groups of the model. Although in general, this stands for QED only, here it must be understood as standing for all three interactions. :)

I know it is confusing for anyone who is not used to it :)

When will we have a steemstem meetup in Nigeria

Is there any STEM facility we could visit?

Damn, that is some sexyscience if I ever saw some.

By Bilbo Baggins?!

Sadly just by me, but you're on the right track :D

Whooooa. That's a brave job. Weldone. Keep it up. Bring more people to steemit. We love it that way 🏃🏃🏃

fantastic friend @galotta, interesting views

omg amazing post. complex

Excellent post! Visit my post and see what you think about this great tourist place that I shared. If you liked it, vote! regards

https://steemit.com/travel/@josegrojasl/cable-car-of-merida-cb5c87054b791

I have fallen for Geneva when I was there with the RMLL people in 2012. This city is just wonderful, at least for visitors.