I actually made that title up, but as awesome and mind blowing as it was, it was so confusing and mind-boggling. It also made me realized that, in the grand scheme of life, I don't know crap! Our tour guides were both so passionate about what they do and overwhelmed us with information. A small portion of it stuck with me, but the rest bounced off, like a charged particle, that probably caused some friction on the bounce and then dissappeared forever. (I'll explain more later)
CERN actually stands for "Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire", or European Council for Nuclear Research.
They do many things here, but I'll try to hit the highlights and explain it so maybe you can understand. Otherwise, here is their website. http://home.web.cern.ch
We arrived at CERN and were shuffled into a conference room where we spent 40 minutes listening to a presentation by an intern who we could all tell was SO passionate about science. You could just tell that it was her absolute dream come true to be able to work at CERN for 1 year. Going into this, I really had no idea what happens here.
CERN is a nuclear research center, but they do research to benefit public knowledge, and for peace. The world wide web was actually discovered by a man working at CERN in 1989. The WWW was then gifted to the world, which is what CERN is about. Science for the greater good.
I actually thought it was really interesting to hear about matter and anti-matter. Now, it gets a little scienc-ey. I'm not quite sure how I remember so much about this, but I was proud of myself for understanding so much of it. And to think that I never even made it to physics class...shame. Haha. So, for every particle of matter there should exist an exact replica of that particle, but only with the opposite charge. This is called an anti-matter. When a an anti-matter and a particle of matter collide, they burst and create energy and then dissappear.
If you look around you, everything you can see or touch, and even our own bodies are made of matter and are ovbiously right here still. This means that there isn't an anti-matter to collide with the matter and make things disappear. The Big Bang should have created exactly as much matter as anti-matter, but it's obvious that there is FAR more matter in the universe today than there is anti-matter.
This is one example of the research that is going on at CERN. One theory to this imbalance is that the particles of anti-matter are floating around a different part of the universe. Like all the matter came to earth and the rest are somewhere further away. They even have a detector on the International Space Station that is reading the levels of anti-matter. So far though, they haven't picked up on any significant numbers of anti-matter in space either. MYSTERY! Or a miracle. Because, technically none of us should be here. Nothing really should be here.
Lots of words...time for a photo. Any guesses?? Anybody??
Basically, (I THINK) how this research is conducted is by speeding charged particles around a HUGE underground tunnel at INCREDIBLY FAST SPEEDS and then collecting data at 4 different points around the track. That data is then sent to other computers around the world and analyzed very carefully.
This will shock you! :
This circular-shaped tunnel is about 27 kilometers (16.7 miles) circumfrence and the particles in there make a full trip around the circle 11 TIMES PER SECOND. Part of this tunnel is in Switzerland but almost all of it is actually in France. The loop is actually tilted also. The side of the circle nearer to Lake Geneva is deeper because the ground was softer (about 150 meters deep) and the side closer to the Jura mountains isn't as deep (50 meters, I think). The station we visited today was about 80 meters underground.
We happened to visit at a good time because the machine is pulled apart, as you can see in the photo above. The skinny silver tube that connects both pieces is where the particles travel through. The moving process is extremely slow, it takes about one month to close it back up.
Inside the tunnel they have to use extremely strong magents to push the particles around the track. This is an example of one of the magnets. Most of them are blue, but there are a few that are orange and those are magnets that are gifts from the United States. The US is currently a country that they call an observer ( I think it was called an observer, can't remember for sure), which just means that we don't contribute to their yearly budget. But we sometimes make donations or can choose to support a cause if we feel.
On the topic of AMERICA, I feel like you guys need to see this.
A few weeks ago, one of my friends wore an American flag one-piece just like this on the plane ride from London to the US. This beauty was spotted today in Geneva, Switzerland. Apparently it's catching on as a world-wide trend. I just wanted everyone to be aware. Now I really want one.
Back to science-world.
I found it extremely amusing when we got to a certain point in the tour, our tour guide let us through a door and then we waited for a few seconds for him to go through a bajillion step security check. The last step was a retinal-scanner! I remember the part of the movie The Incredibles where Edna does that and always thought it was the coolest thing ever. Everyone else was talking about Star Trek and maybe Tom Cruise movies that have those also, but my taste in movies is much too immature for that. Haha. I'm pathetic.
Group photo!
The circled part is brass and is made out of shells recycled from the second World War.
One more group photo below. The background is actually a canvas, not the real thing, but it's to-scale what one of the data-recording experiment centers looks like. The pipe that the particles fly through is very very tiny, at the very center.
We started our tour at 2pm and didn't finish until at least 5:30. It was worth it, but long! After being 80 meters underground we were all hungry, thirsty, tired, and information-overwhelmed. We celebrated by getting burgers at Holy Cow. It's a gourmet burger joint that is pretty American-ized. Yahoo for being able to read a menu PERFECTLY!
We ate and talked for a while about politics, military spending, and education in the US and other countries in the EU, and Germany. Always Interesting! I can't even begin to explain how much I've learned just from talking to my friends here. How much French I've learned to speak......? Let's not talk about that. Oy.
Ready to put my brain to work for SCIENCE! :)
Have a good day!
Love alllll you people!