This week has been dubbed "CMS Week" at CERN, which means that it's all things CMS, with a delicious BBQ thrown in. (By the way, CMS, or Compact Muon Solenoid, is one of four major experiments located along the ring of the LHC) My collaboration, ATLAS, had their week a couple weeks ago, "ALICE Week" was last week, you get the idea. But since I'm not a part of CMS, I couldn't get a ticket to the BBQ myself, and so someone else in CMS had to purchase my ticket for me.
There were two shuttle buses, one at 6:15 and one at 6:30, that took you 5.5 miles across the ring of the LHC (literally the extreme other side of it), so you can imagine it was even farther since there is no road that cuts directly across the LHC. After a 40 minute ride and a few wrong turns, we noticed some CERN-looking buildings. When we arrived, there was someone speaking at a microphone, but it was nearly impossible to understand him because we were inside the equivalent of a gigantic warehouse with noise all around. So we moved on, got in a couple collaboration photos, and went to the site of the main attraction.
I'm not sure how much you know about the detectors of the LHC, but here are some numbers for you. The ATLAS detector is 45m (148 ft) long by 25m (92 ft) high and weighs as much as the Eiffel Tower (7,000 tons). It is a behemoth of a machine. The CMS detector is more compact (hence the "C" in CMS...) at 21m (70 ft) long and is cylindrical with a 15m (50 ft) diameter. It weighs 12,500 tons. To a physics nerd, it would be incredible to be able to see such amazing products of humankind. They are the most advanced machines man has ever made (ok, I may be slightly biased here...this is where the nerdiness comes in). We can't usually go down the 300 feet of elevator shaft and through a maze of tunnels to the detectors because when the LHC is powered up and running, the amount of radiation coming from the beam would be enough to kill you in a very short period of time. But if the LHC is off and it's been a few days or so, the radiation levels have died down enough for humans to safely be near the detector.
Have you guessed what the main attraction was yet? I'll just tell you. I GOT TO SEE THE CMS DETECTOR!! Nerd alert, nerd alert, nerd alert. But really, I got to go down those 300 feet and through that maze of tunnels, hard hat and all, and see one of the most amazing machines of the decade. I can't describe how awesome it was. To see where it all begins, with two hydrogen atoms (essentially) colliding in fantastic fashion...it was beyond words. Well worth the 20 francs I paid for that ticket, and I'm not even counting the food. I would have paid 50 (NERD - how many of you would have paid anything to see a big mass of electronics?). Life = complete. Done. I'm not sure if I will ever get to see anything like that again.
Breathe in...breathe out...nerd rant complete.
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